Mabel’s lip quivered again.  Then she turned impulsively toward Grace and said:  “Yes; I will tell you, although no one can help me.  I suppose you don’t know where I live or anything about me, do you?”

“No,” replied Grace, shaking her head, “but I’d be glad to have you tell me.”

“Well,” continued Mabel, “I’m an orphan, and I live with Miss Brant.  She——­”

“Not that horrible, miserly Miss Brant who lives in that ugly yellow house on Elm Street?” interrupted Grace in a horrified tone.

“Yes, she is the one I mean,” continued Mabel.  “She took me from an orphan asylum two years ago.  I hated her the first time I ever saw her, but the matron said I was old enough to work, that I’d have a good home with her and that I should be paid for my work.  She promised to send me to school, and I was wild to get a good education, so I went with her.  But she is perfectly awful, and I wish I were dead.”

Her voice ended almost in a wail.

“I don’t blame you,” said Grace sympathetically.  “She has the reputation of being one of the most hateful women in Oakdale.  I am surprised that she even allows you to go to school.”

“That’s just the trouble,” the girl replied, her voice husky.  “She’s going to take me out of school.  I shall be sixteen next month, and exempt from the school law.  So she is going to make me stop school and go to work in the silk mill.  I worked there all through vacation last summer, and she took every cent of my wages.  She took my freshman prize money, too.”

“What a burning shame!” exclaimed Grace indignantly.  “Haven’t you any relatives at all, Miss Allison, or any one else with whom you could stay?”

Mabel shook her head.

“I don’t know anything about myself,” she said.  “I was picked up on the street in New York City when I was three years old, and as no one claimed me, I was put in an orphanage.  There was one woman at the orphanage who was always good to me.  She remembered the day they brought me, and she said that I was beautifully dressed.  She always believed that I had been stolen.  She said that I could tell my name, ’Mabel Isabel Allison,’ and that I would be three years old in November, but that I couldn’t tell where I lived.  Whenever they asked me I cried and said I didn’t know.  She wanted to save my clothes for me, thinking that by them I might some day find my parents, but the matron took them away from her, all but three little gold baby pins marked ‘M.I.A.’  She hid them away from the matron.  When she heard I was to go with Miss Brant, she kissed me, and gave them to me.  She was the only person that ever cared for me.”

The tears stood in Grace’s eyes.

“You poor, little thing!” she cried.  “I care for you, and I’m going to see if I can do something for you.  You shan’t stop school if I can help it.  I can’t stay with you any longer, just now, because I am going to Miss Bright’s and I am late.  It is eight o’clock, you see.”