s living!

"Who is Mrs. O'Meath?" she asked.

"She's the lady 't takes care of me."

"Your nurse?"

"N--I don't know. She ain't my mother."

"Well, she don't take very good care of you, I think," said Mildred,
looking around with an air of disapproval.

"Oh! she's drunk to-day," explained Molly, busily eating her bread.

"Drunk!" Mildred's eyes opened with horror.

"Yes. She'll be all right to-morrow." Her eyes, over the fragment of
roll yet left, were fastened on the rose which Mildred, in her chase
after Roy, had forgotten all about and still held in her hand.

"What is that?" she asked, presently.

"What? This rose?" Mildred held it out to her.

"A rose!" The girl's eyes opened wide with wonder, and she took it in
her thin hands as carefully as if it had been of fragile glass. "Oh!
I never saw one before."

"Never saw a rose before! Why, our garden and yard are full of them.
I break them all the time."

"Are you a princess?" asked Molly, gazing at her.

[Illustration: "_'ARE YOU A PRINCESS?' ASKED MOLLY_"]

Mildred burst out into a clear, ringing laugh.

"No. A princess!"

Molly was perhaps a little disappointed, or perhaps she did not wholly
believe her. She stroked the rose tenderly, and then held it out to
Mildred, though her eyes were still fastened on it hungrily.

"You can have it," said Mildred, "for your own."

"Oh! For my own? My very own?" exclaimed the cripple, her whole face
lit up. Mildred nodded.

"Oh! I never thought I should have a rose for my own, for my very
own," she declared, holding it against her cheek, looking at it,
smelling it and caressing it all at once, whilst Mildred looked on with
open-eyed wonder and enjoyment.

Mildred asked a great many questions, and Molly told her all she knew
about herself. She had been lying there in that little room for years
without ever going out, and she had never seen the country. Mildred
learned all about her life there; about the birds outside and the bird
in the cage. Mildred could see it from the window when she climbed
upon the bed. She thought of the roses in her garden and of the birds
that sang around her home, flying about among the trees, and to think
that Molly had never seen them! Her heart ached. It dawned upon her
that maybe she could arrange to have her see it. She asked what she
would rather have than anything in the world.

"In the whole world?" asked Molly.

"Yes, in the whole world."

Mo