ing object for one's charitable sympathies though she
certainly was, for, the more helpless and repulsive-looking, the more
would cousin Serena's tender heart warm toward her.

Our errand to Johnny's was nominally to purchase flowers, and, of
course, we did invest therein, and came out bearing some of his
choicest blossoms; but cousin Serena made use of the opportunity to
take a close observation of Matty as she sat at her little peanut-stand
in the corner, sullen and lowering, the picture of discontent and
misery, as usual.

But cousin Serena did more than this; for, with the tact which she
always showed in dealing with people of this class, she succeeded in
arousing a slight feeling of interest in the sullen, disagreeable
little cripple.

The one gift which had been granted to Matty was a profusion of
beautiful hair, which, however, was never seen to perfection, as it was
always braided tightly and wound in a close coil about her head, giving
to the wizened, shrunken face an even older look than was natural to
it. If she had any pride in any thing, it must have been in this
hair,--indeed, she had little else to be proud of,--for it was always
fairly tidy. Johnny, it seemed, always exacted a certain amount of
cleanliness and decency as the price of her admission into his shop;
not, perhaps, that he had any inherent love for this virtue, as such,
or that his own comfort and happiness depended upon them, but because
he feared that his trade might be injured if his customers found there
such a dirty, ragged little object as Matty had formerly been. Clean
hands and faces, well-brushed hair, and as much patching of ragged
clothes as the neglected, worse than motherless creatures could
compass, were required from Matty and Tony. His good-natured wife
sometimes befriended them in this way, and put in a few stitches for
them; the result being profitable in more ways than one. It was she,
and not the miserable, intemperate mother, who plaited Matty's glossy
locks in the heavy braid which she then wound round her head.

Cousin Serena went up to the peanut-stand, invested in Matty's wares,
the child serving her in the dull, mechanical way usual with her, and
smiled kindly down at her, eliciting, however, no response.

"What pretty hair you have, Matty!" was Miss Craven's next advance;
and, as she spoke, she lightly touched with her gloved finger the
shining coil which many a society belle might have envied.

A gleam lighte