Just at that eventful moment in came my Tartar. One glance at the soap, my distorted visage, and the froth in the glass, told him the whole story; and the effect was magical. To throw himself on the floor, to kick up his heels in a kind of convulsive ecstasy, to burst into a succession of shrill, crowing screams, like a pleased baby, was the work of a moment; and he kept on kicking and crowing, till, provoked as I was, I could not help laughing along with him. Then he suddenly sprang up and stood before me with his usual solemn face, as if it were somebody else who had been doing all this, and he were utterly shocked at him. But he never afterward alluded to the occurrence, nor did I ever again see him laugh, or even smile.
[Begun in No. 17 of Harper's Young People, February 24.]
BIDDY O'DOLAN.
BY MRS. ZADEL B. GUSTAFSON.
Chapter IV.
Little Katy Kegan had the blackest hair and eyes you ever saw, and she was very pretty, with color like the cream and red of the lady-apples packed in tempting pyramids in the fruit stalls. She was the kind of girl who keeps you always expecting, without your knowing what it is you expect. Katy was very bright, quick as a dart in her motions, but as rough and sharp as a prickly-brier if things didn't go to suit her. She had all the bad habits which friendless little children learn from living on the streets, with no one to care what they do or how they feel. She was saucy and bold, and used very bad words, and thought it smart to steal fruit and pea-nuts when she could; and she would tell a lie about her thefts, or indeed about anything else, as glibly as a toad swallows a fly. If you ever saw that done, you know that it is pretty swiftly done; and just as a toad, when it has swallowed a fly, looks as if it had never so much as heard of such an insect, so Katy, when she told a lie, would look straight at you, and smile with an air of such innocence that you would find it hard to not believe her. These sad faults were Katy's misfortunes. She did not know how wrong they were.
But you can see, if you think a moment, that such habits would be a great trouble in the way of her finding a home, because good people would not like to take a little child with such naughty ways into their homes, to be with their own dear children. Still, Katy's pretty face and bright mind, and the love she was so quick to give to any one who was kind to her, made people feel like trying to see what they could do for her.
Three times Mr. Kennedy placed Katy in good homes, in the care of noble people, who wished to help him in such work. In each instance Katy had been loved, because she was so bright and sweet and lovable when she felt like being so; but her sudden fits of anger, and the strange and naughty things she would say and do, made her new friends feel anxious and troubled. Yet Katy had never been sent away from these homes. Perhaps she might have been, but she never waited for that; she ran away of her own accord each time, without saying a word about it, and nothing that Biddy or Mr. Kennedy could say could make Katy agree to go back when once she had run away.