Little Miss Mouse

by Amy Ella Blanchard

With Ruth it was different. She remembered when she had worn pretty clothes and when a sweet and dainty mother had fed her choice bits from a well-appointed table, when a tall father had taken her to drive behind a gray horse. She remembered, too, a pretty house and garden which had been home to her. She could not recollect how it happened that all changed, but so it did, and, by degrees, the place she and her mother called home, became poorer and poorer till a garret under the eaves of a tall building was their habitation.

When it came to this, there was no father there to see the manner of it; only a pale and sad mother who wept constantly and who coughed often as she sat over a table, writing, writing. After a while there was less to eat, no fire and the cough grew worse. Then they took her mother away one morning after she had lain for hours very pale and still. Ruth could not rouse her.

Some one came in and whispered: "She is dead, poor thing."

And then Ruth knew what was the matter. In a turmoil of terror and grief she had rushed down the steps and out into the street. Her mother could not be dead. It needed but a doctor to make her well, and it was a doctor the desperate little child was seeking when she was discovered by a city missionary, exhausted and weeping and weary with wandering.

At first, she had repelled all advances from Miss Hester, and had no words even for Billy, but his good nature at last brought a response and she accepted his companionship, while for Miss Hester there was springing up a deep affection. She was no longer jealous for the mother who had become an angel, for she was fading into a sweet and lovely dream.

She no longer resented the fact that Miss Hester had taken her in from charity, for she was beginning to realize that something more than cold duty prompted Miss Hester's kind acts. To-day for the first time she understood in what light Miss Hester really regarded her, for, could she have given to any one that she did not love, the clothing of the long mourned little twin sister, Henrietta?

The child took off the coat, carefully laid it on Miss Hester's bed, then she fingered it gently. It was lined with soft wadded silk, and in the little pocket was a folded handkerchief. Ruth drew it out and silently held it out to Miss Hester.

"You can use that, too," Miss Hester told her.

And Ruth put it back again. It gave her a truer sense of taking Henrietta's place to know that it was there.

She wore the red coat proudly to church the next Sunday, and though, at any other time she would have allowed Stray to take such liberties as pleased him, she spoke to him quite sharply when he attempted to jump upon her with not too clean paws.