No, she couldn’t.  She never had been a thief.  She remembered her mother, who had died two years ago.  The pretty lady getting into the carriage had made her think of her!  Oh! how good it was that the dear mother could never be hungry again.  And she had said, “Jennie, never tell a lie, never steal.”

She sat down on a doorstep and began to cry.  It was very cold now, and she was so chilled that the tears froze on her thin cheeks.  She curled herself up in the corner.  If she could only get to sleep.

“Hillo!” said a cheerful voice, and some one shook her by the shoulder.  “You’ll freeze to death here!  It’s pinching cold!  You better run home.”

“Lemme be.  I haven’t any home.  And I was almost asleep.  You’ve brought all the old pain back.”

Sturdy young Susy Diller, herself a poor working girl, dragged up the forlorn little object and scanned the thin, blue face.

“Where have you been?”

“Station-houses and such,” the child answered sullenly.  “After old Molly died, they turned me out.  I hadn’t any capital, so I had to go out of trade.  I’ve tried to beg—­”

[Illustration:  “She sat down on a doorstep and began to cry.”]

Susy stood considering.  What would Granny say if she brought the poor thing home?  “Don’t you ask another one to your Christmas party,” she had said already.  “There won’t be room for ’em to stand on one foot.”  Susy drew her sleeve across her eyes.  Somehow her heart had grown very tender since she had been going to the mission school.  A little scene flashed into her mind:  On Sabbath, Mr. Linley, the most splendid man in the world, Susy insisted to Granny, had been explaining to the boys and girls how even the Saviour of all the world had been houseless.

“I wish I’d been there!” said Susy bravely, “I’d a’ took Him in.”

“Susy,” replied Mr. Linley, “when we do such a thing for the very poorest and meanest, we do it for the Lord.”  And then he read the beautiful commendation that the Saviour was to bestow at the last upon those who did what they could in this world, picturing their blessed joy and surprise as they said:  “Lord, when saw we Thee hungry and fed Thee, or sick and ministered unto Thee?” He had a way of making such vivid pictures that the boys used to listen wide-eyed and open-mouthed.

So Susy had announced to Granny that she meant to give a Christmas party, and repeated to her all the conversation at the Sabbath-school as she always did.

“I thought you was going to get that nice new jacket?  And you have just money enough.”

“I’ll wait two or three weeks for that,” declared Susy.  “You see it’s so much nicer on Christmas.  I don’t understand a bit how the Saviour did come down to earth, but it seems good to think He was a little boy, though He was a good sight better’n any of us.  When you think of all that, you can get kinder nigh to him, just as I do to Mr. Linley, our Sabbath-school teacher.