essie! Put down your arms, and listen to me.
Sobbing will not mend matters, and you might as well make up your mind
to be patient. Of course I should like to take you with me, if I had
a home; but, as I told you just now, we are so poor that we must live
where we can, not where we prefer. Because I wear nice pretty clothes
do you suppose I have a pocketful of money? I have not a cent to buy
even a loaf of bread, and I can't ask Miss Jane to take care of you as
well as of Stanley and myself. Poor little thing, don't cry so! I know
you are lonely here without Stanley, but it can't be helped. Jessie,
don't you see that it can not be helped?"

"I don't eat so very much, and I could sleep with Buddie and wouldn't
be in the way,--and I can wear my old clothes. Oh, please, Salome! I
will die if you leave me here."

"You will do no such thing; you are getting well as fast as possible.
Crying never kills people,--it only makes their heads ache, and their
eyes red and ugly. See here, if you don't stop all this, I shall quit
coming to see you! Do you hear what I say?"

The only reply was a fresh sob, which the child strove to smother by
hiding her face in Salome's lap.

The matron, who sat by the open window, looked up from the button-hole
she was working, and, clearing her throat, said,--

"Better let her have her cry out,--that is the surest cure for such
troubles as hers. She was always manageable and good enough until
Stanley ran away, and since then she does nothing but mope and bite
her finger-nails. Cry away, Jessie, and have done with it. Ah, miss,
the saddest feature about Asylums is the separation of families;
and if the matron had a heart of stone it would melt sometimes at
sight of these little motherless things clinging to each other. I'm
sure I have shed a gallon of tears since I came here. It is a
fearful responsibility to take charge of an institution like this,
for if I try to make the children respect my authority, and behave
themselves properly, outsiders 'specially the neighbors, says I am
too severe; and if I let them frolic and romp and make as much din
and uproar as they like, why, then the same folks scandalize me
and the managers, and say there is no sort of discipline maintained.
I verily believe, miss, that if an angel came down from heaven to
matronize these children, before six months elapsed all the
godliness would be worried out of her soul by the slanders of the
public and the squabbles of the