Mrs. Mann was thin and meagre, and wholly untidy.  The wind lashed her dirty cotton skirt around her, disclosing a dirtier petticoat and men’s shoes.  The skin of her worn, blond face had a look as if the soil of life had fairly been rubbed into it.  All the lines of this face were lax, displaying utter lassitude and no energy.  She, however, had her evanescent streaks of life, as now.  Once in a while a bubble of ancestral blood seemed to come to the surface, although it soon burst.  She had come, generations back, of a good family.  She was the run out weed of it, but still, at times, the old colors of the blossom were evident.  She turned to Maria.

“If,” said she, “your ma sent her out with this young one, I don’t see why you went to pullin’ her hair fur?”

“I gave her a whole half-pound of chocolates,” returned Maria, in a fine glow of indignation, “if she would let me push the baby till four o’clock, and it isn’t four o’clock yet.”

“It ain’t more than half-past three,” said Gladys.

“Shet up!” said her mother.  She stood looking rather helplessly at the three little girls and the situation.  Her suddenly wakened mental faculties were running down like those of a watch which has been shaken to make it go for a few seconds.  The situation was too much for her, and, according to her wont, she let it drop.  Just then a whiff of strong sweetness came from the house, and her blank face lighted up.

“We are makin’ ’lasses candy,” said she.  “You young ones all come in and hev’ some, and I’ll take the baby.  He can get warm, and a little of thet candy won’t do him no harm, nuther.”  Mrs. Mann used the masculine pronoun from force of habit; all her children with the exception of Gladys were boys.

Maria hesitated.  She had a certain scorn for the Manns.  She eyed Mrs. Mann’s dirty attire and face.  But she was in fact cold, and the smell of the candy was entrancing.  “She said never to take the baby in anywhere,” said she, doubtfully.

Josephine having tired of chocolate, realized suddenly an enormous hunger for molasses candy.  She sniffed like a hunting hound.  “She didn’t say not to go into Mrs. Mann’s,” said she.

“She said anywhere; I heard her tell you,” said Maria.

“Mrs. Mann’s ain’t anywhere,” said Josephine, who had a will of her own.  She rushed around and caught up the baby.  “She’s most froze,” said she.  “She’ll get the croup if she don’t get warmed up.”

With that, Josephine carrying the baby, Maria, Gladys, and Mrs. Mann all entered the little, squalid Mann house, as hot as a conservatory and reeking with the smell of boiled molasses.

When Josephine and Maria and the baby started out again, Maria turned to Josephine.

“Now,” said she, “if you don’t let me push her as far as the corner of our street, I’ll tell how you took her into Mrs. Mann’s.  You know what She’ll say.”

Josephine, whose face was smeared with molasses candy, and who was even then sucking some, relinquished her hold on the carriage.  “You’ll be awful mean if you do tell,” said she.