A chirp rose from near the ground. Ayleesabet was tired
of being disregarded for so long.

"You blessed Lamb!" cried Ethel Blue. "Did you say, 'Come, come,' just
because you heard it? Did you think we were talking very learnedly
about things we didn't know much about! Never mind, ducky daddles,
we'll know a lot about them six months from now!"

"Just the way we've learned a lot about babies in the last six months
from this little teacher!" added Ethel Brown.

"Come, come. Home, home," remarked Elisabeth insistently.

"What's the matter? Are your leggies tired? Want the Ethels to carry
you?"

Elisabeth made it known that she would like some such method of
transportation, and sat joyfully on a "chair" which the two girls made
by interclasping their wrists.

Not for long did this please her ladyship.

"Down, down," she demanded in a few minutes.

"We might as well go home if she's too tired to walk and too restless
to ride," decided Ethel Brown, and they turned about, to the evident
pleasure of the baby.

As they were returning along Church Street but were still at a distance
from Dorothy's house Elisabeth suddenly gave a chirrup of delight. The
Ethels looked about to see the cause of this unexpected expression of
joy. Crawling out through a hedge on to the sidewalk was a child of
about Elizabeth's age, but a thin and dirty little mite, with a face
that betrayed her race as Irish.

"What's this morsel doing here all by herself!" exclaimed Ethel Blue.

"She must have run away; or perhaps she isn't alone. Let's look about
for her mother."

Up and down the street they looked while Elisabeth scraped acquaintance
with the sudden arrival upon her path.

"It doesn't seem as if she could be far off."

In truth she was not far off, for as the girls wondered and exclaimed a
weak voice made itself heard from the other side of the hedge.

"Don't take her away," it said.

Leaving the children to entertain each other on the sidewalk they
enlarged the hole from which the new baby had crawled, and pushed their
way through it. On the ground behind the hedge, and hidden from the
sidewalk by its thick twigs lay a young woman, so pale that she
frightened the girls.

"Don't take the baby away. I'll feel better in a little while. She
crept off from me."

"How did you get here?" asked Ethel Brown.

"I came out from New York to look for work in the country. I felt so
sick I lay down here."

"Did you get an