with perfect frankness. He was Italian, by the looks of him.

One of our workers went around in Madison Street to invite him to the
Settlement, where we would give him all the flowers he wanted.

"But come by the front door, not over the back fence," was the message
she bore, and he said he would. He made no bones of having raided our
yard. He wanted the "tree" and took it. But he didn't come. It was a long
way round; his was more direct. This spring the same worker caught him
climbing the back fence once more, and this time trying to drag back with
him a whole window-box. She was just in time to pull it back on our side.
He let go his grip without resentment. It was the fate of war; that time
we won. We renewed our invitation after that, and, when he didn't respond,
sent him four blossoming geraniums with the friendly regards of a neighbor
who bore no grudge. For in our social creed the longing for a flower in
the child-heart covers a maze of mischief; and a maze it is always with
the boys. No wonder we feel that way. Our work, all of it, sprang from
that longing and was built upon it. But that is another story.

The other day I looked down and saw our flowers blooming there, but with a
discouraged look I could make out even from that height. Still no news
from their owner. A little girl with blue ribbons in her hair was watering
them. I went around and struck up an acquaintance with her. Mike was in
the country, she said, on Long Island, where his sister was married. She,
too, was his sister. Her name was Rose, and a sweet little rose she did
look like in all the litter of that tenement yard. It was for her Mike had
made the garden and had built the summer-house which she and her friends
furnished. She took me to it, in the corner of the garden. You could just
put your head in; but it was worth while. The walls, made of old boxes and
boards, had been papered with colored supplements. The "Last Supper" was
there, and some bird pictures, a snipe and a wood-duck with a wholesome
suggestion of outdoors; on a nicely papered shelf some shining bits of
broken crockery to finish things off. A doll's bed and chair furnished
one-half of the "house," a wobbly parlor chair the other half. The
initials of the four girl friends were written in blue chalk over the
door.

The "garden" was one step across, two the long way. I saw at a glance why
the geraniums drooped, with leaves turning yellow. She had taken them out
of the pots an