ngela answered sweetly. "You were tired."

"I am a bad old woman!" said old Marg, mistrustfully.

"Never mind that, either!" said Angela. "Let me be your friend. If you
will, you shall never be cold or hungry again."

A profound wonder came into the old face--then it began to writhe, and
from each eye oozed scant tears, seeking a channel amid the seams and
wrinkles of the sunken cheeks.

"You will let me be your friend," urged Angela.

Still old Marg wept silently, the scant tears of age.

"You shall have a pleasant home and----"

A swift, suspicious glance darted from the wet eyes.

"Not a 'sylum, miss, please!" said the old woman.

"No," said Angela quietly. "Not an asylum, A home--a bright, clean,
comfortable home----"

"I can work, miss!" put in old Marg, doubling her knotted hands to show
their strength. "I can wash, an' scrub----"

"Yes," said Angela, "you may work all you are able, helping to keep
things clean and comfortable."

Still old Marg looked doubtful. Wiping her cheeks with a corner of the
shawl, she half turned toward the door.

"Have you a family, or any one belonging to you?" asked Angela, thinking
to have reached the root of the difficulty.

"Yes," said the old woman stoutly. "I have a cat. Where I go, she must
go, too!"

Angela patted the grimy hand, with a laugh which was good to hear.

"I understand you perfectly," she said. "I have a cat of my own. You and
_your_ cat shall not be separated."

A half-hour later entered the young man Robert. Angela pointed silently
to old Marg, sitting in a warm corner, contentedly munching her
Christmas dinner. "What have you done to her?" he asked. "She looks more
human already."

Angela laughed again, that same laugh which goes to one's heart so. "I
have adopted her--and her cat!" she answered. "That's all!"

THE FIRST PURITAN CHRISTMAS TREE.

(ANONYMOUS.)

Mrs. Olcott called her boys, and bade them go to the pine woods and get
the finest, handsomest young hemlock tree that they could find.

"Get one that is straight and tall, with well-boughed branches on it,
and put it where you can draw it under the wood-shed after dark," she
added.

The boys went to Pine Hill, and there they picked out the finest young
tree on all the hill, and said, "We will take this one." So, with their
hatchets they hewed it down and brought it safely home the next night
when all was dark. And when Roger was quietly sleeping in the adjoining
room,