'll take a pot of coffee and a
bit of this hot stew for our neighbor."

"Which neighbor, John?"

"Miss Armacost."

"Miss--Armacost! What in the world would she, with all her luxuries,
want with stew from our plain table?"

"Well, the boiler in her kitchen burst this morning. Pipes frozen, and
no fire till things are fixed; that is, to cook by. Pipes over the
handsome parlor frozen, too, and leaking down into all the fancy stuff
with which it is filled. Two of the servants sleep at their own homes,
as you know, and the two who are left have all they can do helping me.
I've 'phoned for somebody from the factory to come out and help, too,
but there are so many orders ahead the boss says I must do the best I
can. Yet the worst of all is--Towsley."

Molly dropped her fork with a rattle. "Towsley! Has anything happened
to him?"

"That's what I'd like to know. That's what that poor rich woman,
yonder, is grieving herself ill over."

"Tell us. Tell us, quick, father, please!"

"There's not so much. She says she found him asleep in her back parlor
at nine o'clock. It was snowing fast then, and she kept him all night.
That's what she meant to do, at least. She gave him his supper and had
him put to bed on her top floor. She knows he was there till midnight,
for she went up to see if he was all right. Then she went to bed
herself, and this morning he was gone. The front door was unfastened,
and he must have gone out that way. At one moment she blames herself
for neglect of him, and the next for having been kind to him."

Molly sprang up from the table.

"Oh! mother, let _me_ go across and carry the stew and tea. Maybe I
could help her to think of something would tell where he was. Anyway,
I can tell her just what kind of a boy Towsley is and how well he can
take care of himself. He isn't lost. He mustn't be. He cannot--shall
not be!" cried the girl, excitedly.

"Very well. Put the stew in the china bowl"--the one nice dish that
their cupboard possessed--"and take your grandmother's little stone
teapot. If Miss Armacost is a real lady, as I think, she will
appreciate the motive of our gift, if not the gift itself. And if
she's not a gentlewoman her opinion would not matter."

"But she is, mother; she is. I'm so glad I can do something for her!
She was nice to me, and 'giff-gaff makes good friends.'"

CHAPTER IV.

THE WANDERING KINDNESS.

On the morning of the blizzard, at that dark hour which comes just