She hung her head and murmured, “It’s money, I dar’sent.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“’Cause we’re too poor,” she replied, which was certainly the oddest reason I ever heard advanced for not accepting offered money.  I was compelled to hurry to my dressing-room to prepare for the next act; but I saw with what disappointed eyes she followed me, and as I kept thinking of her and her queer answer I told my maid to go out and see if the pretty, very clean little girl was still there, and, if so, to send her to my room.  Presently a faint tap, low down on the door, told me my expected visitor had arrived.  Wide-eyed and smiling she entered, and having some cough drops on my dressing-table, I did the honours.  Cough drops of strength and potency they were, too, but sweet, and therefore acceptable to a small girl.  She looked at them in her wistful way, and then very prettily asked, “Please might she eat one right then?”

I consented to that seemingly grave breach of etiquette, and then asked if her mother was with her.

“Oh, no!  Sam had brought her.” (Sam was the gas man.)

“Why,” I went on, “did you not take that money, dear?” (her eyes instantly became regretful).  “Don’t you want it?”

“Oh, yes, ma’am,” she eagerly answered.  “Yes, ma’am, I want it, thank you; but you see I might get smacked again—­like I did last week.”

Our conversation at this embarrassing point was interrupted by the appearance of Sam, who came for the little one.  I sent her out with a message for the maid, and then questioned Sam, who, red and apologetic, explained that “the child had never seen no theatre before; but he knew that the fifty cents would be a godsend to them all, and an honest earned fifty cents, too, and he hoped the kid hadn’t given me no trouble,” and he beamed when I said she was charming and so well-mannered.

“Yes,” he reckoned, “they aimed to bring her up right.  Yer see,” he went on, “her father’s my pal, and he married the girl that—­a girl—­well, the best kind of a girl yer can think of” (poor Sam), “and they both worked hard and was gettin’ along fine, until sickness come, and then he lost his job, and it’s plumb four months now that he’s been idle; and that girl, the wife, was thin as a rail, and they would die all together in a heap before they’d let any one help ’em except with work.”

“What,” I asked, “did the child mean by getting a smacking last week?”

“Oh,” he answered, “the kid gets pretty hungry, I suppose, and t’other day when she was playin’ with the Jones child, there in the same house, Mrs. Jones asks her to come in and have some dinner; and as she lifted one of the covers from the cooking-stove, the kid says:  ’My, you must be awful rich, you make a fire at both ends of your stove at once.  My mamma only makes a fire under just one hole, ’cause we don’t have anything much to cook now ‘cept tea.’  The speech reached the mother’s ears, and she smacked the child for lettin’ on to any one how poor they are.  Lord, no, Miss, she dar’sent take no money, though God knows they need it bad enough.”