hers when anything
went wrong with her.

"I'll bet 'Muvver Jim's' in the dumps," she murmured, as a cloud stole
across the flower-like face; then the tired muscles relaxed, and she
ceased to rebel.

"Muvver Jim"? Douglas repeated, feeling that he must recall her to a
knowledge of his presence.

"That's what I calls him," Polly explained, "but the fellows calls him
'Big Jim.' You might not think Jim could be a good mother just to look
at him, but he is; only, sometimes, you can't tell him things you could
a real mother," she added, half sadly.

"And your real mother went away when you were very young?"

"No, she didn't go AWAY----"

"No?" There was a puzzled note in the pastor's voice.

"She went out," Polly corrected.

"Out!" he echoed blankly.

"Yes--finished--Lights out."

"Oh, an accident." Douglas understood at last.

"I don't like to talk about it." Polly raised herself on her elbow and
looked at him solemnly, as though about to impart a bit of forbidden
family history. It was this look in the round eyes that had made Jim so
often declare that the kid knew everything.

"Why mother'd a been ashamed if she'd a knowed how she wound up. She
was the best rider of her time, everybody says so, but she cashed in by
fallin' off a skate what didn't have no more ginger 'an a kitten. If you
can beat that?" She gazed at him with her lips pressed tightly together,
evidently expecting some startling expression of wonder.

"And your father?" Douglas asked rather lamely, being at a loss for
any adequate comment upon a tragedy which the child before him was too
desolate even to understand.

"Oh, DAD'S finish was all right. He got his'n in a lion's cage where
he worked. There was nothing slow about his end." She looked up for his
approval.

"For de Lord's sake!" Mandy groaned as the wonder of the child's
conversation grew upon her.

"And now I'm down and out," Polly concluded with a sigh.

"But THIS is nothing serious," said the pastor, trying to cheer her.

"It's serious ENOUGH, with a whole show a'-dependin' on you. Maybe you
don't know how it feels to have to knock off work."

"Oh, yes, I do," Douglas answered quickly. "I was ill a while ago
myself. I had to be in bed day after day, thinking of dozens of things
that I ought to be doing."

"Was you ever floored?" Polly asked with a touch of unbelief as she
studied the fine, healthy physique at the side of her bed.

"'Deed he was, chile," Mandy cried, fee