The yard was swept clean and a little drain had been dug at
the side to let the water run off. A few drowned flowers leaned over
on their hard clay beds, and there was a neat curtain and a mosquito
netting on each window. But right against the window that overlooked
the Cassidys' yard, Mrs. Cassidy had piled all the old boards, boxes
and rubbish she could find, to obstruct the view to the town, of her
too ambitious neighbour. "Now, what do you think of that?" cried
Madame. "Isn't she the malicious little soul?"

"Good day, Mrs. Kent, and how are you to-day?"

"Good day, Mrs. Adam," from a sharp-faced neat woman, sitting at the
doorway of the barricaded house, knitting rapidly.

"It's a beautiful day, isn't it?" said Madame ingratiatingly.

"Lovely," responded the woman. "It's a great thing we had so much
rain, we need a lot down here, we're that dry."

Madame chose to take the sarcasm as a joke, and laughed blithely.

But the woman did not smile. "She's had to work too hard, poor soul,"
whispered the visitor when they had passed. "She's clean and thrifty
but she has to wash to support a crippled boy and a consumptive girl.
No wonder she's sour."

They passed two or three more sorry-looking houses and finally paused
before the gate of the home of Madame's little pupil. The bare
grassless yard was filled with old boxes and rubbish. A big lumbering
lad of about fourteen sprawled over the doorstep playing with a string.
He looked up with vacant eyes, and clutched at the visitors' skirts,
muttering and jabbering in idiot glee.

Madame put her hand tenderly on his small, ill-shaped head.

"Poor Eddie," she whispered, "poor boy."

She fumbled in her big black satchel and brought out a gay candy stick.
He grabbed it with strange cries of joy. The sounds brought a ragged
little ghost of a woman to the door, carrying a tiny bundle on her arm.

"Well, well, is that you, Madame?" she cried, smiling a broad toothless
smile. "I thought it was you, an' Minnie she says, I believe that's my
teacher, Ma."

Madame climbed the steep steps, Helen following. The room was dirty
and untidy. A rusty stove and table, three chairs and an ill-smelling
cupboard in the corner, with some gaudy glass dishes upon it, were the
only furniture.

"And how are you, Mrs. Perkins? This is the new teacher, Miss Murray.
When Minnie passes out of my room, she'll he under this lady's care.
And how is my little girl this afternoon?"