et her attention. Surely,
she must be often hungry herself, or why should she have so many gray
hairs?

Puppet, leaning against the tree, ran her fingers over the guitar
frets in light harmonies; but the lady did not look.

Her thoughts must be far away, in a quiet and happy place, that
Puppet's harmonies should seem a part of that place.

The guitar broke into a low, mournful minor. Still the lady gave no
heed to Puppet.

Puppet was feeling very hungry. She would play the Fandango. That
_must_ rouse any one. She began at the most rattling part.

The gray-haired lady looked round quickly. "Bless me, bless me! what's
this?" Seeing a little girl out by the tree, she put her sewing on the
table, and came to the door and into the yard.

"Dear me! a little girl with yellow hair, and I just to have been
dreaming of a little girl with yellow hair!"

"Is anything the matter with my hair, mum?" Puppet stopped playing,
and ran her hands through the yellow mass of uncombed locks.

"Ah, no, little girl! there is nothing the matter with your hair.
Only--" The lady was thinking how soft, and fine, and curly was the
yellow hair of which she had been dreaming.

"What do you want?" asked the lady.

"I'm very hungry," said Puppet, "because of the walk, and--and--and
all," concluded Puppet, remembering that the lady could not
understand.

"Come in, then."

Puppet went in. Up in one corner of the sitting-room were a little
tip-cart and a doll. Puppet ate her bread and meat, looking hard at
the tip-cart.

"Where is it, mum?"

"Where is what, child?"

"The child, mum." Puppet pointed to the tip-cart.

"Gone, my dear," said the lady, softly.

"Dead?" Puppet remembered that that was what they said about her uncle
when he went away. It was the only going away that she had ever known.

"Yes, I suppose so," said the lady, with a little shiver.

"That's bad, mum."

"No, not bad," said the lady, sorrowfully. "It is just right that it
should be so."

"But it must be lonesome like, unless there were kicks and things."
Puppet was still thinking of her uncle.

The lady wondered what the child could mean, and not knowing, said,--

"What's your name? How could I have forgotten to ask your name?"

"Puppet."

"That's a funny name. And where do you live?"

"Two or three miles away from here."

"Have you walked here to-day?"

"Yes, mum."

"What should make the child walk so far, I wonder?"

"Money, mum, and things to