rd.

"Goodness, dear!" laughed Ruth, "we can't make the old Corner House a
refuge for destitute females."

"I don't care!" spoke up Dot, quickly. "Didn't they make the
Toomey-Smith house, on High Street into a home for indignant old maids?"

At that the older girls shouted with laughter.
"'In-di-gent'--'in-di-gent'! child," corrected Agnes, at last. "That
means without means--poor--unable to care for themselves. 'Indignant old
maids,' indeed!"

"Maybe they _were_ indignant," suggested Tess, too tender hearted to see
Dot's ignorance exposed in public, despite her own private criticism of
the little one's misuse of the English language. "See how indignant
Aunt Sarah is--and _she's_ an old maid."

This amused Ruth and Agnes even more than Dot's observation. It was true
that Aunt Sarah Maltby was frequently "an indignant old maid."

But Tess endured the laughter calmly. She was deeply interested in the
problem of Mrs. Eland's future, and she said:

"Maybe Uncle Peter ought to have left the hospital some of his money
when he died, instead of leaving it all to us and to Aunt Sarah."

"Do you want to give up some of your monthly allowance to help support
the hospital, Tess?" demanded Ruth, briskly.

"I--I---- Well, I couldn't give _much_," said the smaller girl,
seriously, "for a part of it goes to missions and the Sunday School
money box, and part to Sadie Goronofsky's cousin who has a nawful bad
felon, and can't work on the paper flowers just now----"

"Why, child!" the oldest Kenway said, with a tender smile, and putting
her hand lightly on Tess' head, "I didn't know about that. How much of
your pin money goes each month to charity already? You only have a
dollar and a half."

"I--I keep half a dollar for myself," confessed Tess. "I could give part
of that to the hospital."

"I'll give some of my pin money, too," announced Dot, gravely, "if it
will keep Mrs. Eland from being turned out of the horsepistol."

Ruth and Agnes did not chide the little one for her mispronunciation of
the hard word this time, but they looked at each other seriously. "I
wonder if Uncle Peter was one of those rich people who should have
remembered the institution in his will?" Ruth said.

"Goodness!" exclaimed Agnes. "If we go around hunting for duties Uncle
Peter Stower left undone, and do them for him, where will _we_ be? There
will be no money left for ourselves."

"You need not be afraid," Ruth said, with a smile. "Mr. Howbridg