running up-stairs, bumped against the
Charities lady.

"Oh! I beg your pardon, Miss Santa Claus," she exclaimed.

The lady laughed. "That's a new name for me," she said.

Anne reddened. "It just slipped out. I don't know your other-folks'
name. And I call you Miss Santa Claus to myself because you are always
giving people things. I don't mean to listen," she explained, "but I
can't help hearing them ask you for coal and shoes and grocery orders."

"You are my little neighbor on the floor above, aren't you?" asked the
lady.

Anne assented.

"It's a nice name you've given me--very much nicer than my own real
name which happens to be Margery Hartman. I know your name. I heard
Albert Naumann call you Anne Lewis."

"You gave Albert shoes to wear to school," said Anne.

"Yes. That is my business--to give things to people who need them. Kind
people provide money for me to help the poor. Isn't that good of them?"

"It's very good," said Anne, earnestly. "Do you give them--shoes, I
mean--to all the children that need them?"

"Not all." Miss Hartman smiled and then she sighed. "I wish I could."

CHAPTER XXV

The new acquaintance soon ripened into friendship. Miss Hartman grew
very fond of the quaint, affectionate child and Anne said Miss Hartman
was "nice as a book." She would tell story after story about the
children she met in her Charity work and then she would sit at the piano
and sing old songs in a sweet, clear voice of the quality that reaches
the heart.

Sometimes Anne went to the Charity office and sat mouse-like watching
the people who came and went. One Saturday afternoon, Peggy Callahan
hurried into the room, untidy as usual, her eyes shining with
excitement.

"Are you the head lady of the Charity?" she asked the lady at the desk.

Miss Margery answered that she was.

"If you please, ma'am, we don't want to be put away," Peggy announced.

"Who wants to put you away? Tell me about it," said Miss Margery.

"The folks over there." The girl nodded her head vaguely. "They say as
how mommer can't take care of us--popper he's got to go to the work'ouse
again. He wa'n't so very drunk this time but the judge sent him
there--mean old thing! And they say mommer can't take care of us and
we'll have to be put away in 'sylums. And we don't want to go. She says
if the Charity folks will help with the rent, we can get on. Don't none
of us eat much and we can do with terrible little," Peggy concluded
bre