like a beaver for an hour or two, and was so glad I’d been to a cooking-class, for I could make a fire, with Lotty to do the grubby part, and start a nice soup with the cold meat and potatoes, and an onion or so.  Soon the room was warm, and full of a nice smell, and out of bed tumbled ‘the babies,’ to dance round the stove and sniff at the soup, and drink milk like hungry kittens, till I could get bread and butter ready.

“It was great fun! and when we had cleared things up a bit, and I’d put food for supper in the closet, and told Lotty to warm a bowl of soup for her mother and keep the fire going, I went home tired and dirty, but very glad I’d found something to do.  It is perfectly amazing how little poor people’s things cost, and yet they can’t get the small amount of money needed without working themselves to death.  Why, all I bought didn’t cost more than I often spend for flowers, or theatre tickets, or lunches, and it made those poor babies so comfortable I could have cried to think I’d never done it before.”

Ida paused to shake her head remorsefully, then went on with her story, sewing busily all the while on an unbleached cotton night-gown which looked about fit for a large doll.

“I have no romantic things to tell, for poor Mrs. Kennedy was a shiftless, broken-down woman, who could only ‘sozzle round,’ as Mrs. Grover said, and rub along with help from any one who would lend a hand.  She had lived out, married young, and had no faculty about anything; so when her husband died, and she was left with three little children, it was hard to get on, with no trade, feeble health, and a discouraged mind.  She does her best, loves the girls, and works hard at the only thing she can find to do; but when she gives out, they will all have to part,—­she to a hospital, and the babies to some home.  She dreads that, and tugs away, trying to keep together and get ahead.  Thanks to Mrs. Grover, who is very sensible, and knows how to help poor people, we have made things comfortable, and the winter has gone nicely.

“The mother has got work nearer home, Lotty and Caddy go to school, and Tot is safe and warm, with Miss Parsons to look after her.  Miss Parsons is a young woman who was freezing and starving in a little room upstairs, too proud to beg and too shy and sick to get much work.  I found her warming her hands one day in Mrs. Kennedy’s room, and hanging over the soup-pot as if she was eating the smell.  It reminded me of the picture in Punch where the two beggar boys look in at a kitchen, sniffing at the nice dinner cooking there.  One says, ’I don’t care for the meat, Bill, but I don’t mind if I takes a smell at the pudd’n’ when it’s dished.’  I proposed a lunch at once, and we all sat down, and ate soup out of yellow bowls with pewter spoons with such a relish it was fun to see.  I had on my old rig; so poor Parsons thought I was some dressmaker or work-girl, and opened her heart to me as she never would have