‘I shall kiss her now, anyhow.’

But Jerry hid her face, and could not be induced to look up until he had moved away from her.

‘Catty as well as pretty,’ Tom said.  ’I wonder who she is anyway, and how she will like the poor-house?’

‘Who said she was going to the poor-house?’ Harold exclaimed indignantly.

‘Mother said so,’ Tom replied.  ’I heard her talking to the cook.  Where would she go if she did not go to the poor-house?  Who would take care of her?’

‘I!’ Harold answered, and to Miss Howard he seemed to grow older a dozen years, as he stood there with his arms folded and the light of a brave manhood in his brown eyes.  ’I shall take care of her.  She will live with grandmother and me.  I found her, and she is mine.’

’’Ess, ’ess, ‘ess,’ came from Jerry, as she swung one little foot back and forth and looked confidingly at her champion.

‘You take care of her!’ Tom sneered, with that supercilious air he always assumed toward those he considered his inferiors.  Why, you and your grandmother can’t take care of yourselves, or you couldn’t if it wasn’t for Uncle Arthur.  Mother says so.  You wouldn’t have any house to live in if he hadn’t given it to you,’

Harold’s arms were unfolded now and the doubled fists were in his pockets clenching themselves tighter and tighter as he advanced to Tom, who, remembering his black eye, began to back towards the nurse for safety.

‘It’s a lie, Tom Tracy,’ Harold said.  ’Mr. Arthur does not take care of us.  We do it ourselves, and have for ever so long.  He did give us the house, but it ain’t for you to twit me of that.  Whose house is this, I’d like to know?  It isn’t yours, nor your father’s, and there isn’t a thing in it yours.  It is all Mr. Arthur’s.’

’Wall, we are to be his hares—­Jack, and Maude, and me.  Mother says so,’ Tom stammered out, while Jerry, who had been looking intently, first at one boy, and then at the other, called out in her own language: 

‘Nein, nein, nein,’ and struck her hand toward Tom.

‘What does she mean by her “Nine, nine, nine,’” he asked of Miss Howard, who replied that she thought it was the German for ‘No, no, no,’ and that the child probably did not approve of him.

Tom knew she did not, and though she was only a baby, be felt chagrined and irritable.  Had he dared, he would have struck Harold, who asked him what he meant by being his uncle’s hare. But he was afraid of Miss Howard, and remembering it must be time for the inquest, he slipped from the room, whispering fiercely to Harold as he passed him: 

‘Darn you, Hal Hastings, I’ll thrash you yet.’

’Let me know when you are ready, and also when you get to be your uncle’s hare,’ was Harold’s taunting reply, as the door closed upon the discomfited Tom.

* * * * *

The inquest was a mere matter of form, for there was no doubt in any one’s mind that the woman had been frozen to death, and she had no friends to complain that due attention had not been paid her.  So after a few questions put to Mr. Tracy, and more to Harold, who was summoned from the nursery to tell what he knew, and a look at the cold rigid face, a verdict was rendered of ‘Frozen to death.’