The water-fall on one side and the sharp rocks on the other made it no easy matter to draw the boys up safely. But at length they were dragged forth into the daylight, to be embraced and shouted over by the whole town, and to receive, a few days later, the praises of the entire Scientific Association, together with the three thousand francs which they had so bravely earned.
BIDDY O'DOLAN.
BY MRS. ZADEL B. GUSTAFSON.
CHAPTER I.
Do you remember Biddy O'Dolan, the little rag-picker and ash girl who found Lily De Koven's broken doll in the ash-can that cold winter's morning? I have not forgotten my promise to tell you the rest about her.
Biddy had a boy-friend, a little Irish boy, who called himself "Chairlier-Shauzy." I suspect his name was Charley O'Shaughnessy. He was just as poor and alone in the world as Biddy, and almost always staid in the same cellar at night.
When Biddy ran off with her doll that cold morning, she not only thought of the hospital and the little girl who had there brought her the flowers, but she thought how she would tell Charley that night about her doll.
The first thing to be done was to get Dolly a dress, and this was the way Biddy managed it. She took an old knife and hacked out a piece of her skirt, then she pulled out of her dingy pocket a little wad. A wad of what? Pins. Pins that she had picked up on the street in the summer, when she swept the street crossings, and had stuck thick and "criss-cross" in a bit of woollen rag. With some of these pins Biddy fastened together the two sides of the cut in her skirt. Next she took the piece of cloth she had cut out, and punched her tough little forefinger through it in two places, and through one of these holes pushed the whole arm and through the other the broken arm of her doll, and pinned the cloth together in the back.
Thus Dolly was dressed, and nearly as well as Biddy, too. Biddy had been very quick about this, and had often looked over her shoulders to see who came in and out of the cellar.