| Page | ||
|---|---|---|
| "They never saw the old fellow withoutshouting" ([See page 21]) | [Frontispiece] | |
| "They stood in a long row" | [13] | |
| "He turned around suddenly" | [19] | |
| "'The top of the mornin' to ye'" | [24] | |
| "All the children except the babies started for school" | [29] | |
| "Although she was warmly clad, the rush of cold air made her shiver" | [39] | |
| "'What on earth are you doing here alone?'" | [44] | |
| "A sturdy leg emerging from his front window" | [53] | |
| "Around his tanned and wrinkled neck went her white arms" | [64] | |
| "After them followed the nurses, carrying the babies" | [73] | |
JERRY'S REWARD
[CHAPTER I.]
THE INTERRUPTED GAME
Jefferson Square was a short street in Gaminsville, occupying just one block. It took only two things on one side of it to fill up the space from corner to corner. One was the Convent of the Good Shepherd, built on a large lot surrounded by a high brick wall; the other, a common where all the people around dumped cinders, rags, tin cans—in fact, anything on earth they wished to throw away. On the other side were dwelling-houses, and these were filled with children—lots of them. There surely were never so many children on one square before!
There were the Earlys, the Rickersons, the Bakers, the Adamses, the Mortons, and the Longs—twenty-one in all.
There were really twenty-eight; but the parents of seven children, though they were not what you might call poor, were not well-born like the others, so nobody counted them any more than they included them in the games that the twenty-one played. This was sad for the seven little outcasts, but the others never thought about that.
The twenty-one had splendid times together. It was play, play, play for ever—dolls, pin fairs, circuses, and games. Every afternoon they gathered in the Mortons' front gate, because it was wider and had three stone steps leading down from it, where all the children could sit.