"HE DREW HER SMALL DARK HEAD DOWN UPON HIS KNEE AND STROKED HER HAIR."
The next morning a carriage drew up before the door of the baker's shop, and a gentleman and a little girl got out,—oddly enough, just as the bun-woman was putting a tray of smoking hot buns into the window. When Sara entered the shop the woman turned and looked at her and, leaving the buns, came and stood behind the counter. For a moment she looked at Sara very hard indeed, and then her good-natured face lighted up.
"I'm that sure I remember you, miss," she said. "And yet——"
"Yes," said Sara, "once you gave me six buns for fourpence, and——"
"And you gave five of 'em to a beggar-child," said the woman. "I've always remembered it. I couldn't make it out at first. I beg pardon, sir, but there's not many young people that notices a hungry face in that way, and I've thought of it many a time. Excuse the liberty, miss, but you look rosier and better than you did that day."
"I am better, thank you," said Sara, "and—and I am happier, and I have come to ask you to do something for me."
"Me, miss!" exclaimed the woman, "why, bless you, yes, miss! What can I do?"
And then Sara made her little proposal, and the woman listened to it with an astonished face.
"Why, bless me!" she said, when she had heard it all. "Yes, miss, it'll be a pleasure to me to do it. I am a working woman, myself, and can't afford to do much on my own account, and there's sights of trouble on every side; but if you'll excuse me, I'm bound to say I've given many a bit of bread away since that wet afternoon, just along o' thinkin' of you. An' how wet an' cold you was, an' how you looked,—an' yet you give away your hot buns as if you was a princess."