n
now. I'm going right home; and you'll get an awful punishing for
coming here!"

The eyes of the Midgett girls glared at her and the insult.

"O, dear! O, dear!" sobbed Bunch, just peeping from one corner of her
apron at the outer door.

"O, dear, what?" snapped Tiny, in such a hurry for a drumstick.

"Tiny, did you see anything on the front stoop when you came in?"
asked Bunch, her eye still peeping at the outer door.

"Any what?"

"O, any--any cats--any wildcats?"

"Wildcats--what are they?"

"O!" said the Midgetts, shouting together; "wildcats! dreffle ones!
my! yes! green eyes! awful cats, that spit fire out o' their mouths,
and claws that'll scratch yer to death;" imitating the clawing with
their long dirty fingers quite in the face of poor Bunch, who
immediately retired to the seclusion of her apron, and continued her
frightened sobs.

"O, where? where?" asked Tiny, excitedly, opening wide her big blue
eyes, and glancing uneasily in every corner.

"Why, jist out o' there, hid under the stoop; an' when yer go out,
they'll pounce onto yer."

"O," said Tiny, bravely, "'tain't so! I don't believe it. There wasn't
any there when I came in."

"That's because they was asleep, then," said Ann Matilda. She had red,
fiery red hair, was freckled, and had tusks for teeth. "They've just
got woke up now; and they're hungry, too."

"So am I," said Tiny. "Come, Bunch, let's hurry past, and they can't
touch us; besides, you know no wild animals live about here nowadays."

"O, but these ones are what comes up out of the sewer," instructed
the Midgetts.

Tiny's courage began quickly to ooze away, and every bit of it
deserted her when she and Bunch just put their noses outside of the
door, and heard a most ferocious ya-o-o-ing from--well, they could not
tell where.

Of the Midgett tribe, there was no one at home but the two girls.
There was no Mr. Midgett, but there was a Mrs. Midgett, who was out
washing. The children had seen her plunging her hard, red arms into
the soap suds, over their mother's wash-tub. She probably had a hard
time managing a living. They were very poor. Sometimes the girls got
employment as nurse girls or as extra help in the neighbors' kitchens;
but no one cared particularly to employ them, they were so vulgar,
indolent, and slovenly. So they subsisted on the odd bits of broken
victuals which they begged from door to door in baskets. Some people
said they always gathered so much, that t