“We’ll take good care of the little girl, neighbors, an’ next summer, if mother an’ me are spared, I reckon the crops will be big enough so’s we can stand the feed of a dozen youngsters from ’round here, who I allow don’t see a spear of grass from one year’s end to another.”
One afternoon in December, when snow covered the brown earth with a mantle of whiteness, as the sleek, well-fed cows and horses were housed in the warm barn, munching contentedly the hay gathered for their especial benefit, and all Nature was under the Ice King’s rule, the Shindle family, with the match-girl in their midst, sat before a roaring fire in the rag-carpeted kitchen, enjoying the genial warmth all the more because of the intense cold outside.
During fully ten minutes not a word had been spoken; and then the farmer said as he laid his hand on the head of the tiny girl, who was sitting upon a footstool near Mrs. Shindle’s side, learning to knit:—
“It would have been pretty hard lines, mother, if this little thing was obliged to walk the streets of that great, big city tryin’ to earn money enough for her feed.”
“Indeed it would, father, and while we live she shall never again know what it is to be homeless,” the good woman replied, as she stroked the brown hair of the little head which had dropped into her lap to hide the tears of gratitude.
Happy and contented as were all the inmates of the kitchen, there was a certain huskiness in the farmer’s voice as he added:—
“After all, mother, it ain’t givin’ we are, it’s receivin’, because she gives more’n she takes. I reckon when ’Siah an’ me lugged her away from New York, it was cuttin’ a mighty big coupon from them five shares of the fresh-air fund we invested in last summer.”
THE END.