“And I want you to understand that if I’ve a right to stay, I will stay,” cried Belle, in a ringing voice.  “I’m not afraid of you, nor a thousand like you.  Either you’re all cats to treat a young girl as you’ve treated me the last two days, or else there’s something that I don’t understand.  But I’ m going to understand it here and now.  You hold your tongue, and let this girl speak who says I’ve taken her place.  She’s the one I’m to deal with.  But first let me say how I got this place—­I asked for it.  That’s the whole story, and I didn’t know I was taking it from any one else.”

Belle’s courageous and truth-stamped manner began to create a diversion in her favor, and all near listened with her to what the dismissed girl might say.  The latter did not in the least respond to Belle’s energy, but after a long, weary sigh she began, without raising her head from her hand as she sat leaning on the counter, “Whether you’re right or wrong, I’m too badly used up to quarrel with you or to answer in any such gunpowdery fashion.  I’m dead beat, but I thought I’d like to come in and see you all once more, and my old place, and who was standing in it.  You are at the beginning, my pert one.  If I was as young and strong as you I wouldn’t come and stand here.”

“How is your mother?” asked the girl in charge of the counter.

“She’s dying, starving,” was the reply, in the same dreary, apathetic tone, and black looks were again directed toward Belle.

She heeded them not, however.  For a moment her eyes dilated with horror, then she sprang to the girl, and taking her hands exclaimed, “Good God!  What do you mean?  Let me go home with you.”

The girl looked at her steadfastly, and then said, “Yes, come home with me.  That’s the best way to understand it all.”

“We’ll bring your mother something by and by,” said two or three of the girls as the poor creature rose slowly to follow Belle, who was ready instantly, and whose course compelled a suspension of judgment on the part of those even the most prejudiced against her.

CHAPTER XVIII

“I believe in you”

“Come,” cried Belle impatiently, as they made their way down Sixth Avenue, which was crowded at that hour; “why do you walk so slowly?  If my mother was as badly off as you say yours is, I’d fly to her.”

“No, you wouldn’t, if you had scarcely eaten anything for two days.”

“What!” Belle exclaimed, stopping short and looking at her companion to see if she were in earnest.  Something in her expression caused the impulsive child to seize her hand and drag her into a bakery near.  Then snatching out her little purse she thrust it into the girl’s hands and said, “Here, take all I have and buy what you like best.”

But instead of buying anything, the stranger looked wistfully into the excited and deeply sympathetic face, and said slowly, “I don’t believe you’re bad after all.”