“Bless your baby heart!” exclaimed Mrs. Geary, wiping her eyes which were moist from conflicting emotions.  “Stay here you shall, if you want to,—­though land knows we can’t well afford the keep of another.”

“Oh, are you too poor to keep me?” cried Marjorie, dismayed.  “I don’t want to be a burden to you.  I thought I could help enough to pay for my ‘keep.’”

“So ye kin, dearie,—­so ye kin,” said old Zeb, heartily.  “We’ll fix it some way, Mother, at least for the present.  Now, Jessiky, don’t ye worrit a mite more.  We’ll take keer on ye, and the work ye’ll do’ll more’n pay fer all ye’ll eat.”

This was noble-hearted bluff on Zeb’s part, for he was hard put to it to get food for himself and his old wife.

He was what is known as “shif’less.”  He worked spasmodically, and spent hours dawdling about, accomplishing nothing, on his old neglected farm.

But, somehow, a latent ambition and energy seemed to reawaken in his old heart, and he determined to make renewed efforts to “get ahead” for this pretty child’s sake.  And meantime, if she liked to think she was helping, by such work as those dainty little hands could do, he was willing to humor her.

Beside all this, Zeb didn’t believe her story.  He still thought she had run away from a well-to-do home; and he believed it was because of an unloving stepmother.

But he was not minded to worry the child further with questions at the present time, and it was part of his nature calmly to await developments.

“Let it go at that, Mother,” he advised.  “Take Jessiky as your maid-of-all-work, on trial,”—­he smiled at his wife over Marjorie’s bowed head,—­“an’ ef she’s a good little worker, we’ll keep her fer the present.”

“My stars!” said Mrs. Geary, and then sat in helpless contemplation of these surprising events.

“And I will be a good worker!” declared Marjorie, “and perhaps, sometime, we can sort of decorate the house, and make it sort of,—­sort of prettier.”

“We can’t spend nothin’,” declared Mr. Geary, “’cause we ain’t got nothin’ to spend.  So don’t think we kin, little miss.”

“No,” said Marjorie, smiling at him, “but I mean, decorate with wild flowers, or even branches of trees, or pine cones or things like that.”

A lump came in Midget’s throat, as she remembered how often she had “decorated” with these things in honor of some gay festivity at home.

Oh, what were they doing there, now?  Had they missed her?  Would they look for her?  They never could find her tucked away here in the country.

And Kitty!  What would she say when she heard of it?  And all of them!  And Mother,—­Mother!

But all this heart outcry was silent.  Her kind old friends heard no word or murmur of complaint or dissatisfaction.  If the forlorn old house were distasteful to Marjorie, she didn’t show it; if her room seemed to her uninhabitable, nobody knew it from her.  She ran out to the fields, and returned with an armful of ox-eyed daisies, and bunches of clover; and, with some grapevine trails, she made a real transformation of the dingy, bare walls.