ot noticed in my hasty interview the night before, that she was
superior to most of the women of her class. She had been grimy and
unkempt the night before, after her long week's work of sweeping and
cleaning and coal-carrying; but to-day, in her clean wrapper and smooth
gray hair, there was a pathetic Sabbath-day air of cleanliness about her
spare, bent figure. Somehow, I felt that she would not be so very angry
when I explained about the pitcher, and I invited her in with genuine
cordiality.

She listened in silence to my story, her knotted hands folded upon her
starched gingham apron.

"That's all right!" she replied, a smile lighting up her tired face.
"I'm just glad you broke the pitcher over that vile fellow's head."

"You know him, then?" I suggested.

She shook her head. "No, I don't know him, but I know the bad lot he
belongs to. I've just warned this girl in here to leave as soon as she
can pack her things. I gave her back her rent-money. She only come day
afore yesterday, and I supposed she was an honest working-girl or I'd
never have took her. She pretended to me she was a skirt-hand, and it
turns out she's nothin' but a common trollop. And I hated to turn her
out, too, even if she did talk back to me something awful. She can't be
more 'n sixteen; but, somehow or t' other, when a girl like that goes to
be bad, there ain't no use trying to reason 'em out of it. You come from
the country, don't you?"

There was a kindly curiosity mirrored in the dim, sunken eyes which
surveyed me steadily, a lingering accent of repressed tenderness in her
voice, and I did not deem it beneath my dignity to tell this decent,
motherly soul my little story.

She listened attentively. "I knowed you were a well-brought-up young
woman the moment I laid eyes on you," she began, the maimed words
falling gently from her lips, despite the high, cracked voice in which
they were spoken. "And I knowed you was from the country, too; so I did.
You don't mind, honey, do you, if I speak sort of plain with you, being
as I'm an old woman and you just a slip of a girl? Do you, now?"

I replied that she might speak just as plainly as she liked with me and
I would take no offense, and then she smiled approvingly upon me and
drew her little checked breakfast-shawl closer about her sunken bosom.

"I like to hear you say that," she went on, "because so many girls won't
listen to a word of advice--least of all when it comes from an old woman
th