ing sharply on his supplicant. "Do you
think I'd be blowing away here if I didn't want a supper myself?
You'd better go on to the bank and ask them."

"I've asked everybody, and it's no use," was the weary answer.

"Well it's no use here either, Mike; if I get any I'll want it
myself."

Mike listlessly wandered on a few steps farther up the dingy road,
and then collapsed, a mere bundle of rags, under the shadow of a
doorway.

"You'll not get much of a supper sitting there," commented Patch,
setting off himself in quest of a more appreciative audience.

At the corner of the next street was a big hospital, and Patch betook
himself thither. He had received stray coppers occasionally from the
visitors who came and went through the ponderous iron gates, and what
had been once might be again. Fortune was going to favour him at
last, he thought, for coming down the steps was a gentle-faced old
lady in a curiously-shaped bonnet and grey gown. Patch realised that
it was a case of "whistling for it" now, and no mistake; so he put on
his most dejected expression and piped out "The Last Rose of Summer"
with truly startling emphasis.

Unhappily there chanced to be a shaggy-haired dog waiting outside the
gate whose taste for music had evidently not been cultivated. At the
very first notes he raised his head with a long howl of disgust that
spoilt the effect entirely. It _was_ trying, for Patch saw his
prospects vanishing into thin air unless his rival could be promptly
silenced; so slipping cautiously behind, he dealt the animal as
vigorous a kick as the dilapidated state of his shoe would permit.

"Oh, thee should not have done that! the poor creature meant no
harm," cried the lady reproachfully, hastening down the steps to
console the sufferer; and Patch discovered, with confusion, that the
dog belonged to her. Truly it had been an unfortunate day.

"He looked like a poor dog; I didn't know it was yours," he stammered
out. "It's the first chance I've had to-day, and he was spoiling the
music."

The old lady looked gravely down at his pinched face and ragged
figure.

"Thee looks ill."

"It's enough to make a fellow ill--hungry like this all day long."

He looked as if he were speaking sorrowful truth. The old lady opened
her bag--"There is sixpence for thee to get some food with," she said
kindly, "and try and remember another time, friend, that if thee art
poor thyself there is the greater reason why thee should'st