A quick flush crept over the child's pale face as she heard the cruel, thoughtless words.
She was very sensitive, and the arrow had touched her heart in its tenderest place.
Her father was a drunkard, she knew, but to be taunted with it before so many was more than she could bear; and with great sobs heaving from her bosom, and hot tears filling her eyes, she turned and ran away from the playground.
Her mother was sitting by the window when she reached home, and the tearful face of the little girl told that something had happened to disturb her.
"What is the matter, Susie?" she asked, kindly.
"Oh mother," Susie said, with the tears dropping down her cheeks, as she hid her face in her mother's lap, "Ned Graham said such a cruel thing about me," and here the sobs choked her voice so that she could hardly speak; "He said that I wasn't anybody, and that father drinks."
"My poor little girl," Mrs. Ellet said, very sadly. There were tears in her eyes, too.
Such taunts as this were nothing new.
"Oh, mother," Susie said, as she lifted her face, wet with tears, from her mother's lap, "I can't bear to have them say so, and just as if I had done something wicked. I wish father wouldn't drink! Do you suppose he'll ever leave it off?"
"I hope so," Mrs. Ellet answered, as she kissed Susie's face where the tears clung like drops of dew on a rose. "I pray that he may break off the habit, and I can do nothing but pray, and leave the rest to God."