-makers in their large, straw hats, as they
tossed the hay about, piled it upon the cart, or "raked after," or
drove along home through the meadow, crushing the sweet breath from the
clover blossoms that lay scattered in their path; and enjoying the song
of the little robin in the linden tree opposite, who was thrilling my
heart with his gushing notes.

* * *

A hand organ! What a nuisance! I fancied I had left them all behind me
in the city, where one has such a surfeit of them. A hand organ in the
_country_! where the little birds never make a discord, or charge us a
fee, either! I'll get up and shut the window, or run off into the back
woods, where such a thing as a hand organ was never heard of.

I got up to put my threat into execution, when my eye was attracted by
the musicians. There was a coarse, stout, sun-burned Irish woman, with
an immense straw hat flapping over her freckled face, tied with a gaudy
ribbon under her _three chins_, singing, "I'd be a butterfly!" At her
side, stood a little girl about six years old, holding an inverted
tambourine, to catch windfalls in the shape of pennies.

The little creature was as delicate as a rose leaf; her eyes were large
and of a soft hazel; her skin fair and white, and her hair waved over
her graceful little head as sweetly as your own. Her hands were small
and white, and her coarse shoes could not hide her pretty little feet.
She was not _that_ woman's child; I was sure of if; for her voice was
as sweet as a wind harp.

"How far have you come, to-day?" asked I of the Irish "butterfly."

"From the city, sure," said she; "would your leddyship give me a
saxpence?"

I'd have given her five times that amount, if she wouldn't have sung to
me again. So I tossed her the "saxpence," and asked if the child had
walked from the city (four miles) too?

"Sure," said the woman, looking a little confused. "Biddy would be
afther going with her mother wheriver she went."

_Her_ mother? I didn't believe it. That child had been delicately
brought up, as sure as my name was Fanny. All my motherly feelings were
roused in an instant.

"If that is the case," said I, carelessly, "I suppose she is hungry,
and her mother, too; if you will let her go down in the orchard with
me, I will bring you back some nice ripe apples."

The little girl looked timidly at the woman, who took a good look at me
out of her bold, saucy, black eyes, and aske