any of them, except perhaps the cook, who allowed him to prepare a
luncheon for himself after his own little rites.

Everything had seemed so pleasant and so successful that Miss Bailey
looked upon a repetition of this visit as a matter of course, and was
greatly surprised on the succeeding Friday afternoon when the Monitor
of the Goldfish Bowl said that he intended to spend the next day at
home.

"Oh, no!" she remonstrated, "you mustn't stay at home. I'm going to
take you out to the Park and we are going to have all kinds of fun.
Wouldn't you rather go and see the lions and the elephants with me than
stay at home all by yourself?"

For some space Morris was a prey to silence, then he managed by a
consuming effort:

"I ain't by mineself."

"Has your father come home?" said Teacher.

"No, ma'am."

"And surely it's not a neighbor. You remember what your mother said
about the neighbors, how you were not to let them in."

"It ain't neighbors," said Morris.

"Then who----?" began Miss Bailey.

Morris raised his eyes to hers, his beautiful, black, pleading eyes,
praying for the understanding and the sympathy which had never failed
him yet. "It's a friend," he answered.

"Nathan Spiderwitz?" she asked.

Morris shook his head, and gave Teacher to understand that the Monitor
of the Window Boxes came under the ban of neighbor.

"Well, who is it, dearest?" she asked again. "Is it any one that I
know?"

"No, ma'am."

"None of the boys in the school?"

"No, ma'am."

"Have you known him long?"

"No, ma'am."

"Does your mother know him?"

"Oh, Teacher, _no_, ma'am! Mine mamma don't know him."

"Well, where did you meet him?"

"Teacher, on the curb. Over yesterday on the night," Morris began,
seeing that explanation was inevitable, "I lays on mine bed, und I
thinks how mine mamma has got a sickness, und how mine papa is by
Harlem, und how I ain't got nobody beside of me. Und, Teacher, it makes
me cold in mine heart. So I couldn't to lay no more, so I puts me on
mit mine clothes some more, und I goes by the street, the while peoples
is there, und I needs I shall see peoples. So I sets by the curb, und
mine heart it go und it go so I couldn't to feel how it go in mine
inside. Und I thinks on my mamma, how I seen her mit bandages on the
face, und mine heart it goes some more. Und, Teacher, Missis Bailey, I
cries over it."

"Of course you did, honey," said Teacher, putting her arm about him.
"Poor, little