er.

"Why, what is it, Mary, paint?" said Lena, putting her finger to her
mouth to taste the dirt spot.

"That's awful poison Lena, don't you know?" said Mary, "that green
paint that you just tasted."

Lena had sucked a good deal of the green paint from her finger. She
stopped and looked hard at the finger. She did not know just how much
Mary meant by what she said.

"Ain't it poison, Nellie, that green paint, that Lena sucked just
now," said Mary. "Sure it is Lena, its real poison, I ain't foolin'
this time anyhow."

Lena was a little troubled. She looked hard at her finger where the
paint was, and she wondered if she had really sucked it.

It was still a little wet on the edges and she rubbed it off a long
time on the inside of her dress, and in between she wondered and
looked at the finger and thought, was it really poison that she had
just tasted.

"Ain't it too bad, Nellie, Lena should have sucked that," Mary said.

Nellie smiled and did not answer. Nellie was dark and thin, and looked
Italian. She had a big mass of black hair that she wore high up on her
head, and that made her face look very fine.

Nellie always smiled and did not say much, and then she would look at
Lena to perplex her.

And so they all three sat with their little charges in the pleasant
sunshine a long time. And Lena would often look at her finger and
wonder if it was really poison that she had just tasted and then she
would rub her finger on her dress a little harder.

Mary laughed at her and teased her and Nellie smiled a little and
looked queerly at her.

Then it came time, for it was growing cooler, for them to drag
together the little ones, who had begun to wander, and to take each
one back to its own mother. And Lena never knew for certain whether it
was really poison, that green stuff that she had tasted.

During these four years of service, Lena always spent her Sundays out
at the house of her aunt, who had brought her four years before to
Bridgepoint.

This aunt, who had brought Lena, four years before, to Bridgepoint,
was a hard, ambitious, well meaning, german woman. Her husband was a
grocer in the town, and they were very well to do. Mrs. Haydon, Lena's
aunt, had two daughters who were just beginning as young ladies,
and she had a little boy who was not honest and who was very hard to
manage.

Mrs. Haydon was a short, stout, hard built, german woman. She always
hit the ground very firmly and compactly as she wal