thing, so she hurried to reply:

"I don't know, I'm sure; but they brush away flies with them."

"Flies!" he repeated, contemptuously, at the same time taking one of the
brooms from her little bundle, and thrusting it about him in all
conceivable ways; pulling open the brush, and altogether ruining it.
"Flies! it is getting too cool for flies; and, besides, my mother never
lets any get into the house; so it's no use any way. Why don't you go
home? It's a shame to be walking round the streets so. You ought to be
in school, or at work, or something else."

[Illustration: CYBELE THE TAMBOURINE GIRL.]

"I don't know how to do anything else," replied Cybele, the blood
rushing to her cheeks; "my aunt is sick, and I want to get some money."

"Tush!--always sick!" replied the boy, contemptuously; "how silly! I
wonder the beggars don't all die some day, they've been sick so long!"

"We are not beggars!" said Cybele, raising her head somewhat proudly,
and preparing to move away. "If you don't want the broom, I'll take it,
if you please."

The boy seemed half pleased, as he looked at her, and said:

"Proud, too--if it isn't funny! Here, don't go away--I want to hear your
tambourine."

So she laid down her bundle of brooms, and, arranging her tambourine,
played him some merry tunes.

"Can't you dance, too?" asked the boy, when she had finished. So she
danced and played to him; and, when she stopped, he placed a penny in
her hand, and coolly walked away.

She looked at the penny lying in her hand, and then after the boy, who
was walking up the street, and she couldn't help thinking how very
little it was, and how she hoped he would have given her more. She
looked at the little broom he had ruined, and everything seemed sadder
than before. Then, by some strange freak, her mind ran off to the
gardens where her mother slept, as it always did when darkness gathered
round her, and she longed, more than ever before, to throw herself on
the ground there, and quietly sleep a long, long time. During the whole
day she had received but a few pennies; so few, they would not induce a
doctor to go down to her sick aunt. If she only could have met some kind
heart, which would have gone home with her, and given kind words and
soothing draughts to the sick one! But it was not brought into her path.

When she came home and saw how much worse her aunt was than when she had
left her in the morning, her little heart grew sick; and Cybele, w