“My! your hands are as red as beets.  Go up to the stove and warm yourself.”

Andy obeyed, spreading out his little hands, and catching the grateful warmth, every now and then looking up into Pinky’s face, and trying with a shrewder insight than is usually given to a child of his age to read the character and purposes it half concealed and half made known.

“Now, Andy,” said Pinky, in a mild but very decided way—­“your name’s Andy?”

“Yes, ma’am,” answered the child, fixing his large, intelligent eyes on her face.

“Well, Andy, if you’ll be a good and quiet boy, you needn’t be afraid of anything—­you won’t get hurt.  But if you make a fuss, I’ll throw you at once right out of the window.”

Pinky frowned and looked so wicked as she uttered the last sentence that Andy was frightened.  It seemed as if a devouring beast glared at him out of her eyes.  She saw the effect of her threat, and was satisfied.

The short afternoon soon passed away.  The girl did not leave the room, nor talk with the child except in very low tones, so as not to attract the attention of any one in the house.  As the day waned snow began to fall, and by the time night set in it was coming down thick and fast.  As soon as it was fairly dark, Pinky wrapped a shawl about Andy, pinning it closely, so as to protect him from the cold, and quietly left the house.  He made no resistance.  A car was taken, in which they rode for a long distance, until they were on the outskirts of the city.  The snow had already fallen to a depth of two or three inches, and the storm was increasing.  When she left the car in that remote neighborhood, not a person was to be seen on the street.  Catching Andy into her arms, Pinky ran with him for the distance of half a block, and then turned into a close alley with small houses on each side.  At the lower end she stopped before one of these houses, and without knocking pushed open the door.

“Who’s that?” cried a voice from an upper room, the stairway to which led up from the room below.

“It’s me.  Come down, and be quiet,” answered Pinky, in a warning voice.

A woman, old and gray, with all the signs of a bad life on her wrinkled face, came hastily down stairs and confronted Pinky.

“What now?  What’s brought you here?” she demanded, in no friendly tones.

“There, there, Mother Peter! smooth down your feathers.  I’ve got something for you to do, and it will pay,” answered Pinky, who had shut the outside door and slipped the bolt.

At this, the manner of Mother Peter, as Pinky had called her, softened, and she said,

“What’s up?  What deviltry are you after now, you huzzy?”

Without replying to this, Pinky began shaking the snow from Andy and unwinding the shawl with which she had bound him up.  After he was free from his outside wrappings, she said, looking toward the woman,

“Now, isn’t he a nice little chap?  Did you ever see such eyes?”