“Then he went and ordered his younger son to marry a poky kind of a girl, that no one liked, to add another big estate on the other side, and that was different.  That was all the world different, because the elder son had been in love all his life with the girl he married, and, oh, Freckles, it’s no wonder, for I saw her!  She’s a beauty and she has the sweetest way.

“But that poor younger son, he had been in love with the village vicar’s daughter all his life.  That’s no wonder either, for she was more beautiful yet.  She could sing as the angels, but she hadn’t a cent.  She loved him to death, too, if he was bony and freckled and red-haired—­I don’t mean that!  They didn’t say what color his hair was, but his father’s must have been the reddest ever, for when he found out about them, and it wasn’t anything so terrible, he just caved!

“The old man went to see the girl—­the pretty one with no money, of course—­and he hurt her feelings until she ran away.  She went to London and began studying music.  Soon she grew to be a fine singer, so she joined a company and came to this country.

“When the younger son found that she had left London, he followed her.  When she got here all alone, and afraid, and saw him coming to her, why, she was so glad she up and married him, just like anybody else would have done.  He didn’t want her to travel with the troupe, so when they reached Chicago they thought that would be a good place, and they stopped, while he hunted work.  It was slow business, because he never had been taught to do a useful thing, and he didn’t even know how to hunt work, least of all to do it when he found it; so pretty soon things were going wrong.  But if he couldn’t find work, she could always sing, so she sang at night, and made little things in the daytime.  He didn’t like her to sing in public, and he wouldn’t allow her when he could help himself; but winter came, it was very cold, and fire was expensive.  Rents went up, and they had to move farther out to cheaper and cheaper places; and you were coming—­I mean, the boy that is lost was coming—­and they were almost distracted.  Then the man wrote and told his father all about it; and his father sent the letter back unopened with a line telling him never to write again.  When the baby came, there was very little left to pawn for food and a doctor, and nothing at all for a nurse; so an old neighbor woman went in and took care of the young mother and the little baby, because she was so sorry for them.  By that time they were away in the suburbs on the top floor of a little wooden house, among a lot of big factories, and it kept growing colder, with less to eat.  Then the man grew desperate and he went just to find something to eat and the woman was desperate, too.  She got up, left the old woman to take care of her baby, and went into the city to sing for some money.  The woman became so cold she put the baby in bed and went home.  Then a boiler blew up in a big factory beside the little house and set it on fire.  A piece of iron was pitched across and broke through the roof.  It came down smash, and cut just one little hand off the poor baby.  It screamed and screamed; and the fire kept coming closer and closer.