But in one thing very near to her heart she had failed thus far. She could not bring peace to the neighborhood. Much as the Woods and the Tins and the Shorts loved her, the war still went on. And as we have seen, when she appeared among them on this day before Christmas, in her quaint costume, looking as though she had stepped from some lovely old picture, they were in the midst of one of their hardest fights.
"Boys," said Lady Rags, "I have come to ask you all to be a surprise party early to-morrow morning. You remember, the most of you, the poor man who fell from the scaffolding while he was painting our house—"
"And bad enough it wanted painting," said Abe Wilson; "hadn't been painted before, I guess, in a hundred years."
"—And was so badly hurt," Lady Rags went on, "that they took him to the hospital. Well, he has been there ever since, and that's nearly two months; but he's coming home to-morrow. And, oh! boys, do you know where that home is?"
"In Mulkins's basement, 'way down in the ground, and dark as Egypt," said Sandy Grip.
"And yet five children without any mother live there," said Lady.
"Give 'em one of yours," suggested Sandy; "three's two too many for one girl."
"Couldn't spare one, for all that," said Lady, smiling. "And as my mothers and I have just found out, these children have had dreadful times since their father went away. They have sold every bit of their furniture, and they have been nearly starved and nearly frozen. And Christmas is almost here—Christmas, when everybody ought to be merry; and I can't bear to think of that poor father coming home to that wretched place. And he must not, boys; you must not let him, brothers."
"How can we help it?" asked both the captains, both the lieutenants, and half the privates.
"By each doing something toward making that basement look a little like merry Christmas. My mothers and I and the other girls have done all we can. We have bought an old stove from Mr. Rust, and a new table from Mr. Ashburner, and Mrs. Lubs has given us a bed, and Mrs. Bond some blankets, and my Sunday-school teacher some clothes, and to-morrow morning we hope a certain surprise party will do the rest."