here cheatin' two wee girls," she said.

Samuel took no notice of her. He addressed his remarks to Patsy.

"Anybuddy could chate them, but I'm thinkin' it'd be the divil's own
job to chate yerself," he said flatteringly.

Patsy smiled. "Don't you try it on, that's all," he said.

"Do ye think I want another batin'?" Samuel grinned. He stayed, and
played with them all afternoon, in spite of Jane's plain-spoken
requests for him to be off. Before he left he had a good tea in the
kitchen, and got sixpence from Lull, who had a tender heart for the
poor. After that he came frequently. He said his mother was dying,
and wrung Lull's heart by his tales of the poor woman's sufferings.
Jane noticed, and did not fail to point out, that grief never spoilt
his appetite for pears. Now and then Samuel would silence her by a
wild fit of weeping. Patsy got angry with Jane for her cruelty.

"Let the poor wee soul alone, an' quit yer naggin' at him," he said one
day, when Jane's repeated hints had made Samuel throw himself on the
grass to cry.

"I wisht I believed he was tellin' no lies," was Jane's answer.

Lull agreed with Patsy that Jane was too suspicious.

"No good iver comes to them that's hasky with the poor," she told Jane.
Lull was Samuel's best friend. Every time he came she gave him
something for his dying mother. There was one thing the children did
not like about Samuel: he never seemed to be content with what he got.
He begged for more and more, till even Patsy was ashamed of him. One
evening he grumbled because Lull had only given him a penny. He had
had a good tea, and his pockets were lined with apples to eat on the
way home.

"It's hardly worth my while comin' if that's all I'm going to get," he
said.

"Then don't be troublin' yerself to come anymore," said Jane; "we'll
niver miss ye."

Samuel looked reproachfully at her. "How would ye like your own mother
to be dyin'?" he asked. Jane's heart melted at once. She offered him
flowers to take back. Samuel refused the flowers. "Thon half-crown ye
have in yer money-box'll be more to her than yer whole garden full," he
said.

But Jane was not sympathetic enough for this. She said she was saving
up to buy Lull a pair of boots at Christmas. After he had gone she
wondered how he could have known about her money-box, and then
remembered that Fly and Honeybird had told him most of the history of
the house on his first visit. The very next day Samue