"Don't laugh, Mrs. Turner, because it is dreadful for children not to have better things. They live down by the railroad tracks and the river, in mud and dirt. I think it is worse for them because they have always lived there, and they don't know anything different. They are not so very bad yet, but you just wait and see what'll happen if they stay there."
"How is it, Sally, that you like such children?"
"Because," was the instant response, "I got acquainted with them. I've discovered that you're pretty sure to like every one if you only get well enough acquainted. I never knew how good Mrs. Mulvaney was until mamma was taken to the hospital, and Mrs. Mulvaney took me and Alfred in. Of course she was cross and everything, but I'll never forget how good she was to us, nor how she cried for joy,—that's what mamma said,—because they had a gay Christmas for once in their lives. She was glad mamma and Alfred and I could come here to live, too; and now I'll tell you something, Mrs. Turner. I'm not the only one that's hoping. This is exactly what Mrs. Mulvaney said when we talked it over. 'We'll put for the country, too, Sally, if we ever get a chance!' So you see, she wants to come."
Nothing more was said about the Mulvaneys for a week, which doesn't mean that Sally forgot them. It happened this way: Alfred brought a letter from the post-office that Saturday morning addressed to Mrs. Elizabeth Brown, and as Mrs. Elizabeth Brown was away all day, the children passed their spare time wondering about its contents. At night their curiosity was satisfied. A farmer's daughter needed the help of a dressmaker for two weeks. Better than that she wrote, "Come as soon as possible, and bring both your children. They can walk to school every day with my brother."
"That lets me out," declared Alfred; "but you may go, Sally, just the same." To show how little he cared, Alfred whistled "Yankee Doodle."
"Perhaps Mr. Turner would give you a vacation," suggested Sally.
"Wouldn't ask him," was the reply. "When they take a feller to work for his board in a grocery store after school hours, and to do chores around the house, he's got to tend to business or lose his job."
Alfred sometimes put on airs. Sally always felt humiliated when her brother talked about working for his board, and how fortunate it was that one of his mother's children happened to be a boy. "What if we'd both been girls?" he used to ask in tones of scorn. Instead of feeling sorry for Alfred, when she and her mother were driven to the Randall farm, Sally envied him because of his importance at home.
"How do you like it out there?" asked the boy at recess a few days later.
