CHAPTER V.
A TEA-PARTY IN THE ROW.
The hot summer days passed by in the Row, and the inhabitants took advantage of the long evenings to go down to the beach and pier, and listen to the bands playing merry tunes, and watch the gaily-dressed people who frequent Yarmouth in the season.
Little Miss Joy was drooping somewhat with the heat, for the summer was one of rather unusual warmth. But though she was quieter, and her voice was not so often heard singing like a bird from her high window opposite Mrs. Harrison's, still she did not get dull or cross. "My Sunbeam!" her old friend called her; and there was nothing he liked better than to sit at his door, after business hours, while Joy talked to him or read him a story. She went to a little day-school in the market-place, and was, in old Mr. Boyd's opinion, a wonderful scholar.
Joy had many things to tell of her school-fellows, and there was one who use to excite her tender pity and her love.
Bertha Skinner was a tall, angular girl of fourteen, who was the butt of the school, often in tears, always submissive to taunts, and never resenting unkindness. That little Miss Joy should choose this untaking girl as her friend was the cause of much discontent and surprise in Miss Bayliff's little "seminary for young ladies." No one could understand it, and little Miss Joy was questioned in vain.
"Such an ugly, stupid girl, always dressed like a fright, and she can't add two and two together. I wonder you speak to her, Joy."
But Uncle Bobo, though confessing that he was surprised at Joy's taste, had a faint notion of the reason she had for her preference.
"It's like my little Joy," he said; "it's just out of the kindness of her heart. She thinks the girl neglected, and so she takes her up, bless her!"