“Yessum,” interrupted Mrs. Callahan.  “And nobody’s got any business to keep such a dog!  We wouldn’t ‘a’ had it happen for the world, ma’am.  I sent you that word ’bout Lois,” she went on, addressing Anne, “so’s you wouldn’t come.  We didn’t want you to know ’bout it till Monday.  Pa he draws his pay to-night and John Edward, too.  John Edward he’s errant boy for a grocer down on M Street.  They’re going to take all their money and buy you the finest doll in Washington, rent or no rent, victuals or no victuals.”

“No, no, no,” protested Anne.

“Don’t you look so white and pitiful,” sobbed Mrs. Callahan.  “I wouldn’t ‘a’ had it happen for the world.  You shall have the finest doll—­”

“I don’t want a doll,” Anne spoke with difficulty.  “Tell them not to, Miss Margery.  It wouldn’t be Honey-Sweet.  Please, oh, please, let’s go home, Miss Margery.”

Poor little Anne!  Miss Margery had her downstairs to tea that evening, and gave her milk toast and pink iced cakes and candy in a Santa Claus box that was to have waited till Christmas.  Then she sang Anne’s favorite songs.  But the shadow did not lift.  Anne kissed her friend good-night and crept away to bed before nine o’clock.  An hour later, Miss Dorcas and Miss Margery tiptoed into her room.  There she lay, her face swollen with weeping and her breath coming in sobbing gasps.  She stirred and crumpled a pillow in her arms, and crooned in her sleep the old lullaby:—­

          “’Honey, honey!  Sweet, sweet, sweet! 
          Honey, honey!  Honey-Sweet!’”

CHAPTER XXVIII

All this time—­so little is our big world—­Miss Drayton was hardly a stone’s throw from Anne.  She was keeping house for her brother-in-law who was busy with office work in Washington.  Pat was at home, having entered classes to prepare for George Washington University.  It was strange that Anne and her old friends went to and fro, back and forth, so near together and yet did not meet.  They must have missed one another sometimes by only a minute or two in a shop or on a street-car or at a street corner.  But week after week passed without bringing them together.

One morning, as Mr. Patterson was glancing over his newspaper at breakfast, he uttered an exclamation of surprise.  “This is something you’ll want to hear,” he said to Miss Drayton—­and then he read aloud an article with these headlines:—­

          Truth Stranger than Fiction

        “Felon Gives himself up

     “Returns to take his Punishment.”

Mr. Carey Mayo of New York City, who had used funds of the Stuyvesant Trust Company and had disappeared two years before just as he was about to be arrested, had surrendered himself to the officers of the law.  His trial was set for an early day.  As he had given himself up of his own free will, it was thought that his sentence would be light.