llustration: _"Little Breeches"_]

She hung her head and murmured, "It's money, I dar'sent."

"Why not?" I asked.

"'Cause we're too poor," she replied, which was certainly the oddest
reason I ever heard advanced for not accepting offered money. I was
compelled to hurry to my dressing-room to prepare for the next act; but
I saw with what disappointed eyes she followed me, and as I kept
thinking of her and her queer answer I told my maid to go out and see if
the pretty, very clean little girl was still there, and, if so, to send
her to my room. Presently a faint tap, low down on the door, told me my
expected visitor had arrived. Wide-eyed and smiling she entered, and
having some cough drops on my dressing-table, I did the honours. Cough
drops of strength and potency they were, too, but sweet, and therefore
acceptable to a small girl. She looked at them in her wistful way, and
then very prettily asked, "Please might she eat one right then?"

I consented to that seemingly grave breach of etiquette, and then asked
if her mother was with her.

"Oh, no! Sam had brought her." (Sam was the gas man.)

"Why," I went on, "did you not take that money, dear?" (her eyes
instantly became regretful). "Don't you want it?"

"Oh, yes, ma'am," she eagerly answered. "Yes, ma'am, I want it, thank
you; but you see I might get smacked again--like I did last week."

Our conversation at this embarrassing point was interrupted by the
appearance of Sam, who came for the little one. I sent her out with a
message for the maid, and then questioned Sam, who, red and apologetic,
explained that "the child had never seen no theatre before; but he knew
that the fifty cents would be a godsend to them all, and an honest
earned fifty cents, too, and he hoped the kid hadn't given me no
trouble," and he beamed when I said she was charming and so
well-mannered.

"Yes," he reckoned, "they aimed to bring her up right. Yer see," he
went on, "her father's my pal, and he married the girl that--a
girl--well, the best kind of a girl yer can think of" (poor Sam), "and
they both worked hard and was gettin' along fine, until sickness come,
and then he lost his job, and it's plumb four months now that he's been
idle; and that girl, the wife, was thin as a rail, and they would die
all together in a heap before they'd let any one help 'em except with
work."

"What," I asked, "did the child mean by getting a smacking last week?"

"Oh," he answered, "the kid gets