201

XXII. CIS TELLS A SECRET 212

XXIII. ROSES THAT TATTLED 219

XXIV. FATHER PAT 233

XXV. AN ALLY CROSSES A SWORD 241

XXVI. THE END OF A LONG DAY 247

XXVII. ANOTHER GIFT 255

XXVIII. ANOTHER STORY 275

XXIX. REVOLT 290

XXX. DISASTER 300

XXXI. THE VISION 318

XXXII. HELP 330

XXXIII. ONE-EYE FIGHTS 345

XXXIV. SIR ALGERNON 357

XXXV. GOOD-BYS 363

XXXVI. LEFT BEHIND 373

XXXVII. UPS AND DOWNS 379

XXXVIII. ANOTHER GOOD-BY 391

XXXIX. THE LETTER 400

XL. "THE TRUE WAY" 407

THE RICH LITTLE POOR BOY

ELEANOR GATES

CHAPTER I

THE WICKED GIANT

HE was ten. But his clothes were forty. And it was this difference in
the matter of age, and, consequently, in the matter of size, that
explained why, at first sight, he did not show how thin-bodied he was,
but seemed, instead, to be rather a stout little boy. For his faded, old
shirt, with its wide sleeves lopped off just above his elbows, and his
patched trousers, shortened by the scissors to knee length, were both
many times too large for him, so that they lay upon him, front, back and
sides, in great, overlapping pleats that were, in turn, bunched into
heavy tucks; and his kitchen apron, worn with the waistband about his
neck, the strings being tied at the back, also lent him--if viewed from
the front--an appearance both of width and weight.

But he was not stout. His frame was not even fairly well covered. From
the apron hem in front, the two legs that led down to the floor were
scarcely larger than lead piping. From the raveling ends of his short
sleeves were thrust out arms that matched the legs--bony, skinny arms,
pallid as to color, and with hardly any more shape to them than there
was to the poker of the cookstove. But while the lead-pipe legs ended in
the sort of hard, splinter-defying boy's feet that could be met with on
any stretch of pavement outside the tenement, the bony arms did not end
in boyish hands. The hands that hung, fingertip