Mary gave the required promise, and Jenny continued:  “I shouldn’t like to have my mother know it, for she scolds all the time now about my ‘vulgar tastes,’ though I’m sure Rose likes the same things that I do, except Billy Bender, and it’s about him I was going to tell you.  He was so pleasant I couldn’t help loving him, if mother did say I mustn’t.  He used to talk to me about keeping clean, and once I tried a whole week, and I only dirtied four dresses and three pair of pantalets in all that time.  Oh, how handsome and funny his eyes looked when I told him about it.  He took me in his lap, and said that was more than he thought a little girl ought to dirty.  Did you ever see any boy you loved as well as you do Billy Bender?”

Mary hesitated a moment, for much as she liked Billy, there was another whom she loved better, though he had never been one half as kind to her as Billy had.  After a time she answered, “Yes, I like, or I did like George Moreland, but I shall never see him again;” and then she told Jenny of her home in England, of the long, dreary voyage to America, and of her father’s death; but when she came to the sad night when her mother and Franky died, she could not go on, and laying her face in Jenny’s lap, she cried for a long time.  Jenny’s tears flowed, too, but she tried to restrain them, for she saw that Rose had shut her book and was watching her movements.

Ere long, however, she resumed her reading, and then Jenny, softly caressing Mary, said, “Don’t cry so, for I’ll love you, and we’ll have good times together too.  We live in Boston every winter, but it will be most six weeks before we go and I mean to see you every day.”

“In Boston?” said Mary, inquiringly. “George lives in Boston.”

Jenny was silent a moment, and then suddenly clapping her hands together, she exclaimed.  “I know George Moreland.  He lives just opposite our house, and is Ida Selden’s cousin.  Why he’s most as handsome as Billy Bender, only he teases you more.  I’ll tell him about you, for mother says he’s got lots of money, and perhaps he’ll give you some.”

Mary felt that she wouldn’t for the world have George know she was in the poor-house, and she quickly answered, “No, no, you mustn’t tell him a word about me.  I don’t want you to.  Promise that you won’t.”

Loth as Jenny was to make such a promise, she finally did, adding, “I guess I won’t tell Rose either, for she and Ida are great friends.  George says he don’t know which he likes best, though he thinks Rose the handsomest.  He like handsome girls, and so do I.”

Mary knew she had no beauty of which to boast, but Ella had, so she very naturally mentioned her sister, saying how much she wished to see her.

“Why, you can see her at church,” answered Jenny.  “Why don’t you ever go?”

“I am going next Sunday, Sally and I,” was Mary’s reply.  “Billy told me the last time he was here that he would come and stay with Alice.”