and breathe, I'll
tell you something."

Mary gave the required promise, and Jenny continued: "I shouldn't like
to have my mother know it, for she scolds all the time now about my
'vulgar tastes,' though I'm sure Rose likes the same things that I do,
except Billy Bender, and it's about him I was going to tell you. He
was so pleasant I couldn't help loving him, if mother did say I
mustn't. He used to talk to me about keeping clean, and once I tried a
whole week, and I only dirtied four dresses and three pair of
pantalets in all that time. Oh, how handsome and funny his eyes looked
when I told him about it. He took me in his lap, and said that was
more than he thought a little girl ought to dirty. Did you ever see
any boy you loved as well as you do Billy Bender?"

Mary hesitated a moment, for much as she liked Billy, there was
another whom she loved better, though he had never been one half as
kind to her as Billy had. After a time she answered, "Yes, I like, or
I did like George Moreland, but I shall never see him again;" and then
she told Jenny of her home in England, of the long, dreary voyage to
America, and of her father's death; but when she came to the sad night
when her mother and Franky died, she could not go on, and laying her
face in Jenny's lap, she cried for a long time. Jenny's tears flowed,
too, but she tried to restrain them, for she saw that Rose had shut
her book and was watching her movements.

Ere long, however, she resumed her reading, and then Jenny, softly
caressing Mary, said, "Don't cry so, for I'll love you, and we'll have
good times together too. We live in Boston every winter, but it will
be most six weeks before we go and I mean to see you every day."

"In Boston?" said Mary, inquiringly. "_George_ lives in Boston."

Jenny was silent a moment, and then suddenly clapping her hands
together, she exclaimed. "I know George Moreland. He lives just
opposite our house, and is Ida Selden's cousin. Why he's most as
handsome as Billy Bender, only he teases you more. I'll tell him about
you, for mother says he's got lots of money, and perhaps he'll give
you some."

Mary felt that she wouldn't for the world have George know she was in
the poor-house, and she quickly answered, "No, no, you mustn't tell
him a word about me. I don't want you to. Promise that you won't."

Loth as Jenny was to make such a promise, she finally did, adding, "I
guess I won't tell Rose either, for she and Ida are great fri