sit down at the table," she said,
"for I have your boiled egg all ready."

Alma took her place opposite her mother. Supper was usually the bright spot
in the day, but this evening there seemed nothing but clouds.

"I want to hear all about it, Alma, but you'd better eat first," said Mrs.
Driscoll, as she poured the tea.

"It isn't anything very much," replied the little girl, torn between the
longing for sympathy and unwillingness to give her mother pain; "only there
aren't any lonely children in that school. Everybody has some one she likes
to play with."

A pang of understanding went through the mother's heart, so tender that she
forced a smile.

"Oh, my dearie," she said, "you remind me of the old song,--

'Every lassie has her laddie,
Nane, they say, have I,
But all the lads, they smile on me,
When comin' thro' the rye.'

If my Alma smiles on all the children, they'll all smile on her."

Alma shook her head. It was too great an undertaking to explain all those
daily experiences of longing and disappointment to her mother. The child's
throat grew so full of the sob that she could not swallow the nice egg.

"This is Valentine's Day," she said, with an effort. "They had a box in
school. Everybody got pretty ones but me. They sent me a 'comic.'"

She swallowed bravely between the sentences, but big tears rolled down her
cheeks and splashed on the gingham apron.

"Well, wasn't it meant to make you laugh, dearie?"

"N-no. It was--was a hateful one. I--I can't tell you."

A line came in Mrs. Driscoll's forehead. Her swift thought pictured the
scene only too vividly. She swallowed, too.

"Silly pictures can't hurt us, Alma," she said.

"But please don't make me go back," returned the child earnestly. "I cried
and ran away, and I know all the other children laughed, and, oh, mother, I
_can't_ go back!" She was sobbing again, now, and trying to dry her tears
with her apron.

Mrs. Driscoll's lips pressed firmly together to keep from quivering.

"Mother," said Alma brokenly, as soon as she could speak again, "when do
you think father will come home?"

For a minute the mother could not reply. The last letter she had received
from her husband had sounded discouraged, and for six weeks now she had
heard nothing. Her anxiety was very great; but it made her position at the
factory more than ever important, while it increased the difficulty of
performing her work.

"I can't tell, dearie," she a