f extreme youth and brutal truth as an ugly old
woman, and yet he noted the trembling and felt like reassuring her.
He took off his little cap. "No, ma'am," said he. "Amy has gone to
drive."

"I wanted to see your mother," said the woman, wonderingly.

"Amy is my mother," replied the boy.

"Oh!" said the woman.

"They have all gone," said Eddy.

"Then I shall have to call another time," said the woman, with a
mixture of ingratiation and despair.

The boy eyed her sharply. "Say," he said, "are you the dressmaker
that made my sister Ina's clothes for her to be married?"

"Yes, I be," replied Madame Griggs.

"Then," said Eddy, "I can tell you one thing, there isn't any use for
you to go to my house now to get any money. I suppose you haven't
been paid."

"No, I haven't," said Madame Griggs. Then she loosened the
flood-gates of her grievance upon the boy. "No, I haven't been paid,"
said she, "and I've worked like a dog, and I'm owing for the things I
bought in New York, and I'm owing my girls, and if I don't get paid
before long, I'm ruined, and that's all there is to it. I 'ain't been
paid, and it's a month since your sister was married, and they'll
send out to collect the bills from the stores, if I don't pay them.
It's a cruel thing, and I don't care if I do say it." The woman was
flouncing along the street beside the boy, and she spoke in a loud,
shrill voice. "It's a cruel thing," she repeated. "If I couldn't pay
for my wedding fix I'd never get married, before I'd go and cheat a
poor dress-maker. She'd ought to be ashamed of herself, and so had
all your folks. I don't care if I do say it. They are nuthin' but a
pack of swindlers, that's what they be."

Suddenly the boy danced in front of the furious little woman, and
stood there, barring her progress. "They ain't!" said he.

"They be."

"They ain't! You can't pay folks if you 'ain't got any money."

"You needn't have the things, then," sniffed Madame Griggs.

"My sister had to have the things to get married, didn't she? A girl
can't get married without the clothes."

"Let her pay for 'em, then."

"I'll tell you what to do!" cried Eddy, looking at her with a sudden
inspiration. "You are in debt, ain't you?"

"Yes, I be," replied Madame Griggs, hopping nervously along by the
boy's side, poor little dressmaker, aping French gentility, holding
her skirts high, with a disclosure of a papery silk petticoat and a
meagre ankle. Even in her distress she