he tried to walk, she found she could do so only with the greatest
difficulty. Here was fresh misfortune. To beg, she must walk. Dragging
herself forward a half-block at a time, she regained the street once
more. She succeeded in begging a couple of nickels, bought a bag of
apples from a vender, and, returning to the park, sank exhausted upon a
bench.

Here she remained all day until evening, Hilda alternately whimpering
for her bread and milk, or playing languidly in the gravel walk at her
feet. In the evening, she started out again. This time, it was bitter
hard. Nobody seemed inclined to give. Twice she was "moved on" by
policemen. Two hours' begging elicited but a single dime. With this, she
bought Hilda's bread and milk, and refusing herself to eat, returned to
the bench--the only home she knew--and spent the night shivering with
cold, burning with fever.

From Wednesday morning till Friday evening, with the exception of the
few apples she had bought, and a quarter of a loaf of hard bread that
she found in a greasy newspaper--scraps of a workman's dinner--Mrs.
Hooven had nothing to eat. In her weakened condition, begging became
hourly more difficult, and such little money as was given her, she
resolutely spent on Hilda's bread and milk in the morning and evening.

By Friday afternoon, she was very weak, indeed. Her eyes troubled her.
She could no longer see distinctly, and at times there appeared to
her curious figures, huge crystal goblets of the most graceful shapes,
floating and swaying in the air in front of her, almost within arm's
reach. Vases of elegant forms, made of shimmering glass, bowed and
courtesied toward her. Glass bulbs took graceful and varying shapes
before her vision, now rounding into globes, now evolving into
hour-glasses, now twisting into pretzel-shaped convolutions.

"Mammy, I'm hungry," insisted Hilda, passing her hands over her face.
Mrs. Hooven started and woke. It was Friday evening. Already the street
lamps were being lit.

"Gome, den, leedle girl," she said, rising and taking Hilda's hand.
"Gome, den, we go vind subber, hey?"

She issued from the park and took a cross street, directly away from the
locality where she had begged the previous days. She had had no success
there of late. She would try some other quarter of the town. After a
weary walk, she came out upon Van Ness Avenue, near its junction with
Market Street. She turned into the avenue, and went on toward the Bay,
pa