fear she'll be a cat.
One day, my sakes, she saw a dog,
Her tail swelled up just like a log;
He barked, she spit,
She does not love dogs, not a bit."

"What color is she?" asked Ethelwyn.

"That is left for your guessing part," said Nan promptly.

Mrs. Flaharty now reluctantly arose.

"It's a trate to hear ye," she said, "but I mus' git troo, and go home.
There's a spindlin' lad named Dick nex' door but wan to where I live,
that can walk only wid a crutch an' not able to do that lately. He'd be
cheered entoirely wid your rhymes an' tales."

"O, maybe mother'll take us to see him this afternoon. We'll ask her.
She's intending to go down that way herself, I know, and she'll be so
good to Dick; she just can't help it," said Ethelwyn, and at once they
dashed off to see, leaving the saucepan crown rolling down the yard, and
their gingham aprons lying on the steps.

_CHAPTER VI_
_A Plan_

It's nice to get gifts,
But better to give:
For giving leaves always a glow
That warms up a part
In every heart;
The joy of it never can go.

There was woe in Ethelwyn's heart and pain in her throat, and the woe
was on account of the pain; for Elizabeth and her mother had gone to
town to arrange things for Dick, who was to be taken to the hospital,
where he was to undergo an operation that would, in all probability cure
him. And now Ethelwyn, ever desirous of being at the head and front of
things, had taken this wretched cold and could not go.

Very shortly after Mrs. Flaharty had told them about Dick, their mother
had taken them to see him. His home was a long way from their cottage,
where the fisher people lived, and the sights and smells in the hot
summer air were hard to bear even for those who were well. Poor little
Dick, lying day after day on his hard bed, with no care except what the
kind-hearted washerwoman could give him, felt that life was an ill thing
at best, and he was fast hastening out of it, with the assistance of ill
nutrition and bad ventilation. Dick's own mother and father were dead,
and his stepmother, a rough-looking creature, when she remembered him at
all, looked upon him as a useless encumbrance, and by her neglect was
making him very unhappy.

Ethelwyn and Elizabeth, quite unused to suffering of this sort, sat
soberly by, during their first visit, and watched their mother bending
tenderly over the feeble little invalid, and ministering to his