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NORMAN WAS A HANDSOME BOY WHEN SHE MARRIED MR. DECKER.

Little Fishers: and Their Nets

BY
PANSY
AUTHOR OF "CHRISTIE'S CHRISTMAS," "A HEDGE FENCE," "GERTRUDE'S
DIARY," "THE MAN OF THE HOUSE," "INTERRUPTED,"
"THE HALL IN THE GROVE," "AN ENDLESS
CHAIN," "MRS. SOLOMON SMITH LOOKING
ON," "FOUR GIRLS AT CHAUTAUQUA,"
"RUTH ERSKINE'S CROSSES,"
"SPUN FROM FACT,"
ETC., ETC.
ILLUSTRATED
BOSTON
D LOTHROP COMPANY
FRANKLIN AND HAWLEY STREETS

Copyright 1887
by
D Lothrop Company

CONTENTS.

PAGE.
CHAPTER I.
The Deckers' Home[7]

CHAPTER II.
Beginning her Life[24]

CHAPTER III.
The Truth is told[43]

CHAPTER IV.
New Friends[63]

CHAPTER V.
A great Undertaking[85]

CHAPTER VI.
How it succeeded[106]

CHAPTER VII.
Long Stories to tell[125]

CHAPTER VIII.
A Sabbath to remember[143]

CHAPTER IX.
A Bargain and a Promise[164]

CHAPTER X.
Pleasure and Disappointment[179]

CHAPTER XI.
A complete Success[204]

CHAPTER XII.
An unexpected Helper[226]

CHAPTER XIII.
The little Picture Makers[240]

CHAPTER XIV.
The Concert[257]

CHAPTER XV.
A Will and a Way[271]

CHAPTER XVI.
An Ordeal[288]

CHAPTER XVII.
The Flower Party[304]

CHAPTER XVIII.
A satisfactory Evening[320]

CHAPTER XIX.
Ready to try[334]

CHAPTER XX.
The Way made plain[351]

CHAPTER XXI.
The New Enterprise[365]

CHAPTER XXII.
Too good to be True[382]

CHAPTER XXIII.
The crowning Wonder[400]

CHAPTER XXIV.
The Past and Present[418]

Little Fishers: and Their Nets.

CHAPTER I.
THE DECKERS' HOME.

JOE DECKER gave his chair a noisy shove backward from the table, over the uneven floor, shambled across the space between it and the kitchen door, a look of intense disgust on his face, then stopped for his good-morning speech:

"You may as well know, first as last, that I've sent for Nan. I've stood this kind of thing just exactly as long as I'm going to. There ain't many men, I can tell you, who would have stood it so long. Such a meal as that! Ain't fit for a decent dog!

"Nan is coming in the afternoon stage. There must be some place fixed up for her to sleep in. Understand, now, that has got to be done, and I won't have no words about it."

Then he slammed the door, and went away.

Yes, he was talking to his wife! She could remember the time when he used to linger in the door, talking to her, so many last words to say, and when at last he would turn away with a kind "Well, good-by, Mary! Don't work too hard."

But that seemed ages ago to the poor woman who was left this morning in the wretched little room with the door slammed between her and her husband. She did not look as though she had life enough left to make words about anything. She sat in a limp heap in one of the broken chairs, her bared arms lying between the folds of a soiled and ragged apron.

Not an old woman, yet her hair was gray, and her cheeks were faded, and her eyes looked as though they had not closed in quiet restful sleep for months. She had not combed her hair that morning; and thin and faded as it was, it hung in straggling locks about her face.

I don't suppose you ever saw a kitchen just like that one! It was heated, not only by the fierce sun which streamed in at the two uncurtained eastern windows, but by the big old stove, which could smoke, not only, and throw out an almost unendurable heat on a warm morning like this, when heat was not wanted, but had a way at all times of refusing to heat the oven, and indeed had fits of sullenness when it would not "draw" at all.

This was one of the mornings when the fire had chosen to burn; it had swallowed the legs and back of a rickety chair which the mistress in desperation had stuffed in, when she was waiting for the teakettle to boil, and now that there was nothing to boil, or fry, and no need for heat, the stump of wood, wet by yesterday's rain, had dried itself and chosen to burn.

The west windows opened into a side yard, and the sound of children's voices in angry dispute, and the smell of a pigsty, came in together, and seemed equally discouraging to the wilted woman in the chair.

The sun was already pretty high in the sky, yet the breakfast-table still stood in the middle of the room.

I don't know as I can describe that table to you. It was a square one, unpainted, and stained with something red, and something green, and spotted with grease, and spotted with black, rubbed from endless hot kettles set on it, or else from one kettle set on it endless times; it must have been that way, for now that I think of it, there was but one kettle in that house. No tablecloth covered the stains; there was a cracked plate which held a few crusts of very stale bread, and a teacup about a third full of molasses, in which several flies were struggling. More flies covered the bread crusts, and swam in a little mess of what had been butter, but was now oil, and these were the only signs of food.

It was from this breakfast-table that the man had risen in disgust. You don't wonder? You think it was enough to disgust anybody? That is certainly true, but if the man had only stopped to think that the reason it presented such an appearance was because he had steadily drank up all that ought to have gone on it during the months past, perhaps he would have turned his disgust where it belonged—on himself.

The woman had not tried to eat anything. She had given the best she had to the husband and son, and had left it for them. She was very willing to do so. It seemed to her as though she never could eat another mouthful of anything.

Can you think of her, sitting in that broken chair midway between the table and the stove, the heat from the stove puffing into her face; the heat from the sun pouring full on her back, her straggling hair silvery in the sunlight, her short, faded calico dress frayed about the ankles, her feet showing plainly from the holes of the slippers into which they were thrust, her hands folded about the soiled apron, and such a look of utter hopeless sorrow on her face as cannot be described?

No, I hope you cannot imagine a woman like her, and will never see one to help you paint the picture. And yet I don't know; since there are such women—scores of them, thousands of them—why should you not know about them, and begin now to plan ways of helping them out of these kitchens, and out of these sorrows?

Mrs. Decker rose up presently, and staggered toward the table; a dim idea of trying to clear it off, and put things in something like order, struggled with the faintness she felt. She picked up two plates, sticky with molasses, and having a piece of pork rind on one, and set them into each other. She poured a slop of weak tea from one cracked cup into another cracked cup, her face growing paler the while. Suddenly she clutched at the table, and but for its help, would have fallen. There was just strength enough left to help her back to the rickety chair. Once there, she dropped into the same utterly hopeless position, and though there was no one to listen, spoke her sorrowful thoughts.

"It's no use; I must just give up. I'm done for, and that's the truth! I've been expecting it all along, and now it's come. I couldn't clear up here and get them any dinner, not if he should kill me, and I don't know but that will be the next thing. I've slaved and slaved; if anybody ever tried to do something with nothing, I'm the one; and now I'm done. I've just got to lie down, and stay there, till I die. I wish I could die. If I could do it quick, and be done with it, I wouldn't care how soon; but it would be awful to lie there and see things go on; oh, dear!"

She lifted up her poor bony hands and covered her face with them and shook as though she was crying. But she shed no tears. The truth is, her poor eyes were tired of crying. It was a good while since any tears had come. After a few minutes she went on with her story.

"It isn't enough that we are naked, and half-starved, and things growing worse every day, but now that Nan mast come and make one more torment. 'Fix a place for her to sleep!' Where, I wonder, and what with? It is too much! Flesh and blood can't bear any more. If ever a woman did her best I have, and done it with nothing, and got no thanks for it; now I've got to the end of my rope. If I have strength enough to crawl back into bed, it is all there is left of me."

But for all that, she tried to do something else. Three times she made an effort to clear away the few dirty things on that dirty table, and each time felt the deadly faintness creeping over her, which sent her back frightened to the chair. The children came in, crying, and she tried to untie a string for one, and find a pin for the other; but her fingers trembled so that the knot grew harder, and not even a pin was left for her to give them, and she finally lost all patience with their cross little ways and gave each a slap and an order not to come in the house again that forenoon.

The door was ajar into the most discouraged looking bedroom that you can think of. It was not simply that the bed was unmade; the truth is, the clothes were so ragged that you would have thought they could not be touched without falling to pieces; and they were badly stained and soiled, the print of grimy little hands being all over them. Partly pushed under, out of sight, was a trundle-bed, that, if anything, looked more repulsive than the large one. There was an old barrel in the corner, with a rough board over it, and a chair more rickety than either of those in the kitchen, and this was the only furniture there was in that room.

The only bright thing there was in it was the sunshine, for there was an east window in this room, and the curtain was stretched as high as it could be. To the eyes of the poor tired woman who presently dragged herself into this room, the light and the heat from the sun seemed more than she could bear, and she tugged at the brown paper curtain so fiercely that it tore half across, but she got it down, and then she fell forward among the rags of the bed with a groan.

Poor Mrs. Decker! I wonder if you have not imagined all her sorrowful story without another word from me!

It is such an old story; and it has been told over so many times, that all the children in America know it by heart.

Yes; she was the wife of a drunkard. Not that Joe Decker called himself a drunkard; the most that he ever admitted was that he sometimes took a drop too much! I don't think he had the least idea how many times in a month he reeled home, unable to talk straight, unable to help himself to his wretched bed.

I don't suppose he knew that his brain was never free from the effects of alcohol; but his wife knew it only too well. She knew that he was always cross and sullen now, when he was not fierce, and she knew that this was not his natural disposition. No one need explain to her how alcohol would effect a man's nature; she had watched her husband change from month to month, and she knew that he was growing worse every day.

There was another sorrow in this sad woman's heart. She had one boy who was nearly ten years old, when she married Mr. Decker; and people had said to her often and often, "What a handsome boy you have, Mrs. Lloyd; he ought to have been a girl." And the first time she had felt any particular interest in Joe Decker was when he made her boy a kite, and showed him how to fly it, and gave him one bright evening, such as fathers give their boys. This boy's father had died when he was a baby, and the Widow Lloyd had struggled on alone; caring for him, keeping him neatly dressed, sending him to school as soon as he was old enough, bringing him up in such a way that it was often and often said in the village, "What a nice boy that Norman Lloyd is! A credit to his mother!" And the mother had sat and sewed, in the evenings when Norman was in bed, and thought over the things that fathers could do for boys which mothers could not; and then thought that there were things which mothers could do for girls that fathers could not, and Mr. Joseph Decker, the carpenter, had a little girl, she had been told, only a few years younger than her Norman. And so, when Mr. Decker had made kites, not only, but little sail boats, and once, a little table for Norman to put his school books on, with a drawer in it for his writing-book and pencil, and when he had in many kind and manly ways won her heart, this respectable widow who had for ten years earned her own and her boy's living, married him, and went to keep his home for him, and planned as to the kind and motherly things which she would do for his little girl when she came home.

Alas for plans! She knew, this foolish woman, that Mr. Decker sometimes took a drink of beer with his noon meal, and again at night, perhaps; but she said to herself, "No wonder, poor man; always having to eat his dinner out of a pail! No home, and no woman to see that he had things nice and comfortable. She would risk but what he would stay at home, when he had one to stay in, and like a bit of beefsteak better than the beer, any day."

She had not calculated as to the place which the beer held in his heart. Neither had he. He was astonished to find that it was not easy to give it up, even when Mary wanted him to. He was astonished at first to discover how often he was thirsty with a thirst that nothing but beer would satisfy. I have not time for all the story. The beer was not given up, the habit grew stronger and stronger, and steadily, though at first slowly, the Deckers went down. From being one of the best workmen in town, Mr. Decker dropped down to the level of "Old Joe Decker," whom people would not employ if they could get anybody else. The little girl had never come home save for a short visit; at first the new mother was sorry, then she was glad.

As the days passed, her heart grew heavier and heavier; a horrible fear which was almost a certainty, had now gotten hold of her—that her handsome, manly Norman was going to copy the father she had given him! Poor mother!

I would not, if I could, describe to you all the miseries of that long day! How the mother lay and tossed on that miserable bed, and burned with fever and groaned with pain. How the children quarreled and cried, and ran into mother, and cried again because she could give them no attention, and made up, and ran out again to play, and quarreled again. How the father came home at noon, more under the influence of liquor than he had been in the morning; and swore at the table still standing as he had left it at breakfast time, and swore at his wife for "lying in bed and sulking, instead of doing her work like a decent woman," and swore at his children for crying with hunger; and finally divided what remained of the bread between them, and went off himself to a saloon, where he spent twenty-five cents for his dinner, and fifty cents for liquor. How Norman came home, and looked about the deserted kitchen and empty cupboard, and looked in at his mother, and said he was sorry she had a headache, and sighed, and wished that he had a decent home like other fellows, and wished that a doctor could be found, who didn't want more money than he was worth, to pay him for coming to see a sick woman, and then went to a bakery and bought a loaf of bread, and a piece of cheese, and having munched these, washed them down with several glasses of beer, went back to his work. Meantime, the playing and the quarreling, and the crying, went on outside, and Mrs. Decker continued to sleep her heavy, feverish sleep.

Several times she wakened in a bewilderment of fever and pain, and groaned, and tried to get up, and fell back and groaned again, and lost her misery in another unnaturally heavy sleep, and the day wore away until it was three o'clock in the afternoon. The stages would be due in a few minutes—the one that brought passengers over from the railroad junction a mile away. The children in the yard did not know that one of them was expected to stop at their house; and the father when he came home at noon had been drinking too much liquor to remember it; and Norman had not heard of it, and for his mother's sake would have been too angry to have met it if he had; so Nan was coming home with nobody to welcome her.

If you had seen her sitting at that moment, a trim little maiden in the stage, her face all flushed over the prospect of seeing father, and the rest, in a few minutes, you would not have thought it possible that she could belong to the Decker family.

She had not seen her home in seven years. She had been a little thing of six when she went away with the Marshall family.

It had all come about naturally. Mrs. Marshall was their neighbor, and had known her mother from childhood; and when she died had carried the motherless little girl home with her to stay until Mr. Decker decided what to do; and he was slow in deciding, and Mrs. Marshall had a family of boys, but no little girl, and held the motherless one tenderly for her mother's sake; and when the Marshalls suddenly had an offer of business which made it necessary for them to move to the city, they clung to the little girl, and proposed to Mr. Decker that she should go with them and stay until he had a place for her again.

Apparently he had not found a place for her in all these seven years, for she had never been sent for to come home.

The new wife had wanted her at first, to be mother to her, as she fancied Mr. Decker was going to be father to her boy. But it did not take her very many months to get her eyes open to the thought that perhaps the girl would be better off away from her father; and of late years she had looked on the possible home-coming with positive terror. Her own little ones had nothing to eat, sometimes, save what Norman provided; and if "he"—and by this Mrs. Decker meant her husband; he had ceased to be "Mr. Decker" to her, or "Joseph," or even Joe—if "he" should take a notion to turn against the girl, life would be more terrible to them in every way; and on the other hand, if he should fancy her, and because of her, turn more against the wife, or Norman, what would become of them then?

So the years had passed, and beyond an occasional threat when Joe Decker was at his worst, to "send for Nan right straight off," nothing had been said of her home-coming. The threat had come oftener of late, for Joe Decker had discovered that there was just now nothing that his wife dreaded more than the presence of this step-daughter; and his present manly mood was to do all he could for the discomfort of his wife! That was one of the elevating thoughts which liquor had given him!

Three o'clock. The stages came rattling down the stony road. Few people who lived on this street had much to do with the stage; they could not afford to ride, and they did not belong to the class who had much company.

So when the heavy carriages kept straight on, instead of turning the corner below, it brought a swarm of children from the various dooryards to see who was coming, and where.

"It's stopped at Decker's, as true as I live!" said Mrs. Job Smith, peeping out of her clean pantry window to get a view. "I heard that Joe had sent for little Nan, but I hoped it wasn't true. Poor Nan! if the Marshalls have treated her with any kind of decency, it'll be a dreadful change, and I'm sorry enough for her. Yes, that must be Nan getting out. She's got the very same bright eyes, but she has grown a sight, to be sure!" Which need not have seemed strange to Mrs. Smith, if she had stopped to remember that seven years had passed since Nan went away.

The little woman got down with a brisk step from the stage, and watched her trunk set in the doorway, and got out her red pocket-book, and paid the fare, and then looked about her doubtfully. Could this be home!

CHAPTER II.
BEGINNING HER LIFE.

SHE did not remember anything, but the yard was very dirty, and the fence was tumbling down, and there were lights of glass out of the windows, and a general air of discomfort prevailed. It did not look like a home. Besides, where were father and mother? There must be some mistake.

The two little Deckers who had played and quarreled together all day had left their work to come and stare at the new comer out of astonished eyes. Certainly they did not seem to have been expecting her.

The new comer turned to the elder of the two children, and spoke in a gentle winning voice: "Little girl, do you live here—in this house?"

The child with her forefinger placed meditatively on her lip, and her bright eyes staring intensely, decided to nod that she did.

"And can you tell me what your name is?"

To this question there was no answer for several seconds, then she thought better of it and gravely said: "I could."

This seemed so funny, that poor Nan, though by this time carrying a very sad heart, could not help smiling.

"Well, will you?" she asked.

But at this the tangled yellow head was shaken violently. No, she wouldn't.

"It can't be," said Nan, talking to herself, since there was no one who would talk with her, looking with troubled eyes at the two uncombed, unwashed children, with their dresses half torn from them, and dirtier than any dresses that this trim little maiden had ever seen before, "this really cannot be the place! and yet father said this street and number; and the driver said this was right." Then she stooped to the little one. "Won't you tell me if your name is Satie Decker?"

But this one was shy, and hid her dirty face in her dirty hands, and stepped back behind her sister who at once came to the rescue.

"Yes, 'tis," she said, "and you let her alone."

A shadow fell over Nan's face, but she said quickly, "Then you must be Susie Decker, and this place is really home!"

But you cannot think how strangely it sounded to her to call such a looking spot as this home. There was no use in standing on the doorstep. She could feel that curious eyes were peeping at her from neighbors' windows. She stepped quickly inside the half-open door, into the kitchen where that breakfast-table still stood, with the flies so thick around the molasses cup, from which the children had long since drained the molasses, that it was difficult to tell whether there was a cup behind it, or whether this really was a pyramid of flies.

The children followed her in. Susie had a dark frown on her face, and a determined air, as one who meant to stand up for her rights and protect the little sister who still tried to hide behind her. I think it was well they were there; had they not been, I feel almost sure that the stranger would have sat down in the first chair and cried.

Poor little woman! It was such a sorrowful home-coming to her. So different from what she had been planning all day.

I wish I could give you a real true picture of her as she stood in the middle of that dreadful room, trying to choke back the tears while she convinced herself that she was really Nettie Decker. A trim little figure in a brown and white gingham dress, a brown straw hat trimmed with broad bands and ends of satin ribbon, with brown gloves on her hands, and a ruffle in her neck. This was Nettie Decker; neat and orderly, from ruffle to buttoned boots. I wonder if you can think what a strange contrast she was to everything around her?

What was to be done? she could not stand there, gazing about her; and there seemed no place to sit down, and nowhere to go. Where could father be? Why had he not stayed at home to welcome his little girl? or if too busy for that, surely the mother could have stayed, and he must have left a message for her.

If the little girls would only be good and try to tell her what all this strangeness meant! She made another effort to get into their confidence. She bent toward Susie, smiling as brightly as she could, and said: "Didn't you know, little girlie, that I was your sister Nettie? I have come home to play with you and help you have a nice time."

Even while she said it, she felt ten years older than she ever had before, and she wondered if she should ever play anything again; and if it could be possible for people to have nice times who lived in such a house as this. But Susie was in no sense won, and scowled harder than ever, as she said in a suspicious tone: "I ain't got no sister Nettie, only Sate, and Nan."

Hot as the room was, the neat little girl shivered. There was something dreadful to her in the sound of that name. She had forgotten that she ever used to hear it; she remembered her father as having called her 'Nannie'; that would do very well, though it was not so pleasant to her as the 'Nettie' to which she had been answering for seven years.

But how strange and sad it was that these little sisters should have been taught to call her Nan! could there be a more hateful name than that, she wondered. Did it mean that her step-mother hated her, and had taught the children to do so? She swallowed at the lump in her throat. What if she should cry! what would those children say or do, and what would happen next? she must try to explain.

"I am Nannie," she couldn't make her lips say the word Nan. "I have come home to live, and to help you!" She did not feel like saying "play with you," now. "Will you be a good girl, and let me love you?"

How Susie scowled at her then! "No," she said, firmly, "I won't."

There seemed to be no truthful answer to make to this, for in the bottom of her heart, Nannie did not believe that she could. Still, she must make the best of it, and she began slowly to draw off her gloves. Clearly she must do something towards getting herself settled.

"Won't you tell me where father is? or mother?" her voice faltered a little over that word; "maybe you can show me where to put my trunk; do you know which is to be my room?"

There were pauses made between each of these questions. The poor little stranger seemed to be trying first one form and then another, to see if it was possible to get any help.

Susie decided at last to do something besides scowl.

"Mother's sick. She lies in bed and groans all the time. She ain't got us no dinner to-day; Sate and me called her, and called her, and she wouldn't say anything to us. There ain't no room only this and that," nodding her head toward the bedroom door, "and the room over the shed where Norm sleeps. Norm is hateful. He didn't bring home no bread this noon for Sate and me; and he said maybe he would; we're awful hungry."

"Perhaps he couldn't," said poor startled Nettie. She hardly knew what she said, only it seemed natural to try to excuse Norm. But what dreadful story was this! If there was really a sick mother, why was not the father bending over her, and the house hushed and darkened, and somebody tiptoeing about, planning comforts for the night? She had seen something of sickness, and this was the way it was managed.

Then what was this about there being no room for her? Then what in the world was she to do? Oh, what did it all mean! She felt as though she must run right back to the depot, and get on the cars and go to her own dear home. To be sure she knew that her father was poor; what of that? so were the Marshalls; she had heard Mrs. Marshall say many a time that "poor folks can't have such things," in answer to some of the children's coaxings. But poverty such as this which seemed to surround this home was utterly strange to Nettie.

Still, though she felt such a child, she was also a woman; in some things at least. She knew there was no going home for her to-night. If she had the money to go with, and if there had been a train to go on, she would still have been stayed, because it would be wrong to go. Her father had sent for her, had said that they wanted her, needed her, and her father certainly had a right to her; and she had come away with a full heart, and a firm resolve to be as good and as helpful and as happy in her old home as she possibly could. And now that nothing anywhere was as she had expected it, was no reason why she should not still do right. Only, what was there for her to do, and how should she begin?

She stood there still in the middle of the room, the children staring. Presently she crossed on tiptoe to the bedroom door which was partly open and peeped in, catching her first glimpse of the woman whom she must call "mother."

Also she caught a glimpse of that dreadful bed; and the horrors of that sight almost took away the thought of the woman lying on it. How could she help being sick if she had to sleep in such a place as that? Poor Nettie Decker! She stood and looked, and looked. Then seeing that the woman did not stir, but seemed to be in a heavy sleep, she shut the door softly and came away.

I don't suppose that Nettie Decker will ever forget the next three hours of her life, even if she lives to be an old woman. Not that anything wonderful happened; only that, for years and years afterwards, it seemed to her that she grew suddenly, that afternoon, from a happy-hearted little girl of thirteen, into a care-taking, sorrowful woman. While she stood in that bedroom door, a perfect whirl of thoughts rushed through her brain, and when she shut the door, she had come to this conclusion:

"I can't help it; I am Nettie Decker; he is my father, and I belong to him, and I ought to be here if he wants me; and she is my mother; and if it is dreadful, I can't help it; there is everything to do; and I must do it."

It was then that she shut the door softly and went back and began her life.

There was that trunk out on the stoop. It ought to go somewhere. At least she could drag it into the kitchen so that the troops of children gathering about the door need not have it to wonder at any longer. Putting all her strength to it she drew it in and shut the door. By this time, Sate, who was getting used to her as she had gotten used to many a new thing in her little life, began to wail that she was hungry, and wanted some bread and some molasses.

"Poor little girlie!" Nettie said, "don't cry; I'll see if I can find you something to eat. Did she really have no dinner, Susie? Oh, darling, don't cry so; you will trouble poor mother."

But Susie had gone back to the scowling mood. "She shall cry, if she wants to; you can't stop her; and you needn't try; I'll cry too, just as loud as I can."

And Susie Decker who had strong lungs and always did as she said she would, immediately set up such a howl as put Sate's milder crying quite in the shade.

Nettie looked over at the bedroom door in dismay; but no sound came from there. Yet this roaring was fearful. How could it be stopped? Suddenly she plunged her hand into the depths of a small travelling bag which still hung on her arm, and brought forth a lovely red-cheeked peach. She held it before the eyes of the naughty couple and spoke in a determined tone: "This is for the one who stops crying this instant."

Both children stopped as suddenly as though they had been wound up, and the machinery had run down.

Nettie smiled, and went back into the travelling bag. "There must be two of them, it seems," she said, and brought out another peach. "Now you are to sit down on the steps and eat them, while I see what can be found for our supper."

Down sat the children. There had been quiet determination in this new-comer's tone, and peaches were not to be trifled with. Their mouths had watered for a taste ever since the dear woolly things began to appear in the grocery windows, and not one had they had!

Now began work indeed. Nettie opened her trunk and drew out a work apron which covered her dress from throat to shoes, and made her look if anything, prettier than before. Where was the broom? The children busy with their peaches, neither knew nor cared; however, a vigorous search among the rubbish in the shed brought one to light. And then there was such a cloud of dust as the Decker kitchen had not seen in a long time. Then came a visit to the back yard in search of chips; both children following close at her heels, saying nothing, but watching every movement with wide-open wondering eyes. Back again to the kitchen and the fire was made up. Then an old kettle was dragged out from a hole in the corner, which poor Mrs. Decker called a closet. It was to hold water, while the fire heated it, but first it must be washed; everything must be washed that was touched. Where was the dishcloth?

The children being asked, stared and shook their heads. Nettie searched. She found at last a rag so black and ill-smelling that without giving the matter much thought she opened the stove door and thrust it in. This brought a rebuke from the fierce Susie.

"You better look out how you burn up my mother's things. My mother will take your head right off."

"It wasn't good for anything, dear," Nettie said soothingly, "it was too dirty." And she stooped down and turned over the contents of the trunk. Neat little piles of clothing, carefully marked with her full name; a pretty green box which Susie dived for, and pushing off the cover disclosed little white ruffles, some of lace, and some of fine lawn, lying cosily together; but Nettie was not searching for such as these. Quite at the bottom of the trunk was a pile of towels, all neatly hemmed and marked. Two of these she selected; looked thoughtfully at one of them for a moment, and then with a grave shake of her head, got out her scissors and snipped it in two. Now she had a dishcloth, and a towel for drying. But what a pity to soil the nice white cloth by washing out that iron kettle! Nettie had grave suspicions that after such a proceeding it would not be fit for the dishes. Still, the kettle must be washed, and to have used the black rag which she had burned, was out of the question.

There was no help for it, the other neat dishcloth must be sacrificed. So taking the precaution to wipe out the iron kettle with a piece of paper, and then to heat it quite hot, and apply soap freely, the cloth escaped without very serious injury; and in less time than it takes me to tell it, the water was getting itself into bubbles over the stove, and a tin pan was being cleaned, ready for the dishes. Then they were gathered, and placed in the hot and soapy water, and washed and rinsed and polished with the white towel until they shone; and the little girls looked on, growing more amazed each moment.

It did not take long to wash every dish there was in that house. I suppose you would have been very much astonished if you could have seen how few there were! Nettie was very much astonished. She wondered how people could get supper with so few dishes, to say nothing of breakfasts and dinner. But you see she did not know how little there was to put on them.

The next question was, Where to put them? One glance at the upper part of the closet where she had found some of them, convinced Nettie that her clean dishes could not be happy resting on those shelves. There was no help for it; they must be scrubbed, though she had not intended to begin housecleaning the first afternoon. More water and more soap, and the few shelves were soon cleared of rubbish, and washed. Nettie piled all the rubbish on a lower shelf and left it for a future day. She did not dare to burn any more property.

"Don't they look pretty?" she said to the children, when at last the dishes were neatly arranged on the shelf. One held them all, nicely.

Susie nodded with a grave face that said she had not yet decided whether to be pleased or indignant.

"What did you do it for?" she asked, after a moment's silent survey.

"Why, to make them clean and shining. You and I are going to clear up the house and make it look ever so nice for mother when she wakes up."

"Did you come home to help mother?"

"Yes, indeed. And you two little sisters must show me how to help her; poor sick mother! I am afraid she has too much to do."

"She cries," said Susie gravely, as though she were stating not a surprising but simply a settled fact; "she cried every day: not out loud like Sate and me, but softly. Father says she is always sniveling."

If you had been watching Nettie Decker just then you would have noticed that the blood flamed into her cheeks, and her eyes had a flash of wonder, and terror, and anger in them. What did it all mean? Where had the children learned such words? Was it possible that her father talked in this way to his wife?

"Hush!" she said unguardedly, "you must not talk so." But this made the fierce little Susie stamp her foot.

"I shall talk so!" she said angrily; "I shall talk just what I please, and you sha'n't stop me." And then the queer little mimic beside her stamped her foot, and said, "You sha'n't stop me."

Said Nettie, "There was a little girl on the cars to-day that I knew. She had a little gray kitty with three white feet, and a white spot on one ear, and it had a blue ribbon around its neck. What if you had such a kitty. Would you be real good to it?"

"I will have a black kitty," said Susie, "all black; as black as that stove." Nettie glancing at the stove, could not help thinking that it was more gray than black; but she kept her thoughts to herself, and Susie went on. "And it should have a red ribbon around its neck; as red as Janie Martin's dress; her dress is as red as fire, and has ruffles on, and ribbons. But what would it eat?"

She did not mean the dress but the kitten.

Nettie laughed, but hastened to explain that the kitten would need a saucer of milk quite often, and bits of various things. This made wise Susie gravely shake her head.

"We don't have no milk," she said, "only once in awhile when Norm buys it; Sate, she often cries for milk, but she don't get none. It don't do no good to cry for milk; I ain't cried for any in a long time."

Poor little philosopher! Poor, pitiful childhood without any milk! Hardly anything could have told the story of poverty to Nettie's young ears more surely than this. Why, she was a big girl thirteen years old, and had lived in a city where milk was scarce, and yet her glass had been filled every evening. Nettie did not know what to make of it. How came her father to be so poor? She was sure that the house did not look like this when she went away; and her clothes had been neat and good. She had the little red dress now which she wore away. She thought of it when Susie was talking, and wondered if with a little fixing it could not be made to fit the black-eyed child who seemed to admire red so much. Finding the kitty a troublesome subject, at least so far as the finding of milk for it was concerned, she turned the conversation to the little girls who had been on the cars; the one with the kitty, and her little sister, whom she called "Pet." "She was about as old as you, Susie, and Pet was about Satie's age. And she was very kind to Pet; she always spoke to her so gently, and took such care of her everybody seemed to love her for her kindness."

"I take care of Sate," said Susie. "I never let anybody hurt her. I would scratch their eyes out if they did; and they know it."

"You slap me sometimes," little Sate said, her voice slightly reproachful.

"Yes," said Susie loftily, "but that is when you are bad and need it; I don't let anybody else slap you."

"The oldest little girl had curly hair," said Nettie, "but it wasn't so long as yours, and did not curl so nicely as I think yours would. And Pet's hair was a pretty brown, like Sate's, and looked very pretty. It was combed so neatly. One wore a blue dress, and one a white dress; but I think they would have looked prettier if they had been dressed both alike."

"I don't like white dresses," said Susie; "I like fiery red ones."

So Nettie resolved that the red dress should be made to fit her.

Meantime, the scrubbing had gone on rapidly; the table was as clean as soap and water could make it. Now if those children would only let her wash their faces and put their hair in order, how different they would look. Should she venture to suggest it?

It all depended on how the idea happened to strike Susie.

CHAPTER III.
THE TRUTH IS TOLD.

IN the bottom of that wonderful little trunk lay side by side two little blue and white plaid dresses, made gabrielle fashion, with ruffles around the bottom and around the neck. Never were dresses made with more patient care. All the stitches were small and very neat.

And they represented hours and hours of steady work. Every stitch in them had been taken by Nettie Decker. Long before she had thought of such a thing as coming home, they had been commenced. Birthday presents they were to be to the little sisters whom she had never seen. She had earned the money to buy them. She had borrowed two little neighbors of the same age, to fit them to, and with much advice and now and then a little skilful handling from Mrs. Marshall, they were finally finished to Nettie's great satisfaction.

It was the day the last stitch was set in them that she learned she was to come herself and bring them.

She thought of them this afternoon. If the little girls would only let her comb their hair and wash their faces and hands, she would put on the new dresses. She had not intended to present them in that way, but dresses as soiled and faded and worn as those the little sisters had on, Nettie Decker had never worn.

She opened the trunk, with both children beside her, watching, and drew out the dresses.

"Aren't these almost as pretty as red ones?" she asked, as she unfolded them, and displayed the dainty ruffles.

"No," said Susie, "not near so pretty as red ones. But then they are pretty. They aren't dresses at all; they are aprons. Are they for you to wear?"

"No," said Nettie, "they are for two little girls to wear, who have their hair combed beautifully, and their hands and faces very clean."

"Do you mean us?"

"I do if the description fits. I can think just how nice you would look if your faces were clean and your hair was combed."

"We will put on the aprons," said Susie firmly, "but we won't have our hair combed, nor our faces washed, and you need not try it."

But Miss Susie found that this new sister had as strong a will as she. The trunk lid went down with a click, and Nettie rose up.

"Very well," she said, "then we will not waste time over them. I brought them for you, and meant to put them on you this afternoon to surprise mamma, but if you don't want them, they can lie in the trunk."

"I told you we did want them," said Susie, looking horribly cross. "I said we would put them on."

"Yes, but you said some more which spoiled it. I say that they cannot go on until your faces and hands are so clean that they shine, and your hair is combed beautifully."

"You can't make us have our hair combed."

"I shall not try," said Nettie, as though it was a matter of very small importance to her. "I was willing to dress you all up prettily, but if you don't choose to look like the little girls I saw on the cars, why you can go dirty, of course. But you can't have the clean new dresses."

"Till when?"

"Not ever. Unless you are clean and neat."

"It hurts to have hair combed."

"I know it. Yours would hurt a good deal, because you don't have it combed every day; if you kept it smooth and nice it would hardly hurt at all. But I didn't suppose you were a cowardly little girl who was afraid of a few pulls. If the dresses are not worth those, we had better let them lie in the trunk."

Nettie was already beginning to understand her queer fierce little sister. She had no idea of being thought a coward.

"Well," she said, after a thoughtful pause, "comb my hair if you like; I don't care. Sate, you are going to have your hair combed, and you needn't cry; because it won't do any good."

It was certainly a trial to all parties; and poor little Sate in spite of this warning, did shed several tears; but Susie, though she frowned, and choked, and once jerked the comb away and threw it across the floor, did not let a single tear appear on her cheeks. And at last the terrible tangles slipped out, and left silky folds of beautiful hair that was willing to do whatever Nettie's skilful fingers told it. When the faces and hands were clean, and the lovely blue dresses had been arranged, Nettie stood back to look at them in genuine delight. What pretty little girls they were! She sighed in two minutes after she thought this. What did it mean that they looked so neglected and dirty?

"These must go in the wash," she said, as she gathered up the rags which had been kicked off.

"Will we put these on in the morning?" asked Susie, in quite a mild tone. She was looking down at herself and was very much pleased with her changed appearance.

"Oh, no," Nettie said, "they are too light to play in. They are dress-up clothes. You must have dark dresses on in the morning."

"We ain't got no dresses only them," and Susie pointed contemptuously at the rags in Nettie's hand. This made poor Nettie sigh again. What did it all mean?

However, there was no time for sighing. There was still a great deal to be done.

"Now we must get tea," she said, bustling about. "Where does mother keep the bread, and other things?"

"She don't keep them nowhere. We don't have no things. I go to the bakery sometimes for bread, and for potatoes, and sometimes for milk. I would go now; I just want to show that hateful little girl in there my new dress, and my curls, but it isn't a bit of use to go. He won't let us have another single thing without the money. He said so yesterday, and he looked so cross he scared Sate; but I made faces at him."

This called forth several questions as to where the bakery was, and Nettie, finding that it was but a few steps away, and that the little girls really bought most of the things which came from there, counted out the required number of pennies from her poor little purse for a loaf of bread and a pint of milk. In the cupboard was what had once been butter, set on the upper shelf in a teacup. It was almost oil, now.

"If I had a lump of ice for this," Nettie murmured, "it might do. Butter costs so much."

"They keep ice at the bakery," said that wise young woman, Susie, "but we never buy it."

This brought two more pennies from the pocketbook; for to Nettie it seemed quite impossible that butter in such a condition could be eaten. So the ice was ordered, and two very neat, and very vain little bits of girls started on their mission.

Tablecloths? Where would the new housekeeper find them? Where indeed! Hunt through the room as she would, no trace of one was to be found. She did not know that the Deckers had not used such an article in months. She thought of the cupboard drawer at home, and of the neat pile which was always waiting there, and at about this hour it had been her duty to set the table and make everything ready for tea. It would not do to think about it. There were sharper contrasts than these. Her proposed present to her mother had been a tablecloth, not very large nor very fine, but beautifully smooth and clean, and hemmed by her own patient fingers. She must get it out to-night, as no other appeared; and of course she could not set the table without one. So it was spread on the clean table, and the few dishes arranged as well as she could. There was a drawing of tea set up in another teacup, and there was a sticky little tin teapot. Nettie, as she washed it, told it that to-morrow she would scour it until it shone; then she made tea. Meantime the little errand girls had returned with their purchases, the butter was resting on a generous lump of ice, the bread which was found to be stale, was toasted, a plate of cookies from the wonderful trunk was added, and at last there was ready such a supper as had not been eaten in that house for weeks. To be sure it looked to Nettie as though there was very little to eat; but then she had not been used to living at the Deckers. She began to be very nervous about the people who were going to sit down at this neat table. Why did not some of them come?

The wise housekeeper knew that neither tea nor toast improved greatly by standing, but she drew the teapot to the very edge of the stove, covered the toast, and set it in the oven. Then she went softly to the bedroom door and opened it. This time a pair of heavy eyes turned, as the door creaked, and were fixed on her with a kind of bewildered stare. She went softly in.

"How do you feel now?" she asked gently. "I have made a cup of tea and a bit of toast for you. Shall I bring them now? The children said you did not eat any dinner."

"Who are you?" asked the astonished woman, still regarding her with that bewildered stare.

Nettie swallowed at the lump in her throat. It would be dreadful if she should burst out crying and run away, as she felt exactly like doing.

"I am Nettie Decker," she said, and her lips quivered a little. "Father sent for me, you know. Didn't you think I would be here to-day, ma'am?"

"You can't be Nan!"

I cannot begin to describe to you the astonishment there was in Mrs. Decker's voice.

"Yes'm, I am. At least that is what father used to call me once in a while, just for fun. My name is Nanette; but Auntie Marshall where I live, or where I used to live"—she corrected herself, "always called me Nettie. May I bring you the tea, ma'am? I think it will make you feel better."

But the two children had stayed in the background as long as they intended. They pushed forward, Susie eager-voiced:

"Look at us! See my curls, and see my new apron, only she says it is a dress, but it ain't; it is made just like Jennie Brown's apron, ain't it? But we ain't got no dresses on. She's got a white cloth on the table, and cookies, and a lump of ice, and everything; and we had two peaches. Old Jock gave us the bread. She sent the money, and I told him to take his old money and give me some bread right straight."

How fast Susie could talk!

There was scarcely room for the slow sweet Satie to get in her gentle, "and me too." Meaning look at my dress and hair. The bewildered mother raised herself on her elbow and stared—from Nan to the little girls, and then back to Nan. She was sufficiently astonished to satisfy even Susie.

"Well, I never!" she said at last. "I didn't know, I mean I didn't think"—then she stopped and pressed her hand to her head, and pushed back the straggling hair behind her ears. "I took dizzy this morning," she said at last, addressing Nettie as though she were a grown-up neighbor who had stepped in to see her, "and I staggered to the bed, and didn't know nothing for a long while. I had a dreadful pain in my head, and then I must have dropped to sleep. Here I've been all day, if the day is gone. It must be after three o'clock if you've got here. I meant to try to do something towards making things a little more decent; though the land knows what it would have been; I don't. There's nothing to do with. I didn't know till this morning that he had the least notion of sending for you—though he's threatened it times enough. I've been ailing all the spring, and this morning I just give out. I don't know what is the matter with me. The bed goes round now, and things get into a kind of a blur."

"Let me bring you a cup of tea and something to eat," said Nettie; "I think you are faint." Then she vanished, the children following. She was back in a few minutes, under her arm a white towel from her trunk; this she spread on the barrel head which you will remember did duty as a table. She spread it with one hand, little Sate carefully smoothing out the other end. In her left hand she carried a cup of tea smoking hot, and poor Mrs. Decker noticed that the cup shone. Susie followed behind, an air of grave importance on her face, and in her hands a plate, covered by a smaller one, which being taken off disclosed a delicately browned slice of bread with a bit of butter spread carefully over it.

"Well, I never!" said Mrs. Decker again, but she drank the tea with feverish haste, stopping long enough to feel of the cup with a curious look on her face. It was so smooth. There was a sound of heavy feet outside, and the children appeared at the door and announced that father and Norm had come. Nettie took the emptied cup, promising to fill it again, urged the eating of the toast while it was hot, and went with trembling heart to meet the father whom she had not seen in so many years that she remembered very little about him.

A great rough-faced, unshaven man, with uncombed hair, ragged and dirty shirt sleeves, ragged and dirty pants, a red face and eyes that seemed but half open, and watery. Nothing less like what Nettie had imagined a father, could well be described. However, if she had but known it, this was a great improvement on the man who often came home to supper. He was nearly sober, and greeted her with a rough sort of kindness, giving her a kiss, which made her shrink and tremble. It was perfumed with odors which she did not like.

"Well, Nan, my girl, you have grown into a fine young lady, have you? Tall for your years, too. And smart, I'll be bound; you wouldn't be your mother's girl if you wasn't. Is it you that has fixed up things so? It is a good thing you have come to take care of us. We haven't had anything decent here in so long, we've most forgot how to treat it. Come on, Norm. This table looks something like living again."

And "Norm" shambled in. Rough, and uncombed, and unwashed, except a dab at his hands which left long streaks of brown at the wrists. A hard-looking boy, harder than Nettie had ever spoken to before. She could not help thinking of Jim Daker who lived in a saloon not far from her old home, and whom she had always passed with a hurried step, and with eyes on the ground, and of whom she thought as of one who lived in a different world from hers, and wondered how it felt to be down there in the slum. Now here was a boy whom it was her duty to think of as a brother; and he reminded her of Jim Daker!

Still there was something about Norm that she could not help half liking. He had great brown, wistful-looking eyes, and an honest face. She had not much chance, it is true, to observe the eyes; for he did not look at her, nor speak, until his father said:

"Why don't you shake hands with Nan? You ought to be glad to see her. You ain't used to such a looking supper as this."

The boy laughed, in an embarrassed way, and said he was sure he did not know whether he was glad to see her or not: depended on what she had come for. He gave her just a gleam then from the brown eyes, and she smiled and held out her hand. He took it awkwardly enough, and dropped it as suddenly as though it had been hot; then sat down in haste at the table, where his step-father was already making havoc with the toast. It was not a very substantial meal for people who had dined on bread and cheese, and were hungering at that moment for beer; but the man had spoken the truth, it was better than they generally found. There was one part of the story, however, that he failed to tell: which was, that he did not furnish money to get anything better. As for Susie and Sate, they had become suddenly silent. They sat close together and devoured their toast, like hungry children indeed, but also like scared children. They gave occasional frightened glances at their father which puzzled and pained Nettie. No suspicion of the truth had yet come to her. Oh, yes, she had smelled the liquor when her father kissed her; but she thought it was something which had to do with the machinery around which he worked.

"Where is the old woman?" he asked suddenly, setting down his empty cup which Nettie had filled for the third time. She looked up at him with a startled air. To whom was he speaking and what old woman could he mean? Her look seemed to make him cross. "What are you staring at?" he said sharply. "Can't you answer a question? Where's your mother?"

Nettie hurried to answer; she was sick, had been real sick all day, but was better now, and was trying to get up.

"She is everlastingly sick," the father said with a sneer; "you will get used to that story if you live here long. I hope you ain't one of the sickly kind, because we have heard enough of that."

This sentence and the tone in which it was spoken, brought the blood in great waves to Nettie's face. It was the first time she had ever heard a man speak of his wife in such a way. Norm looked up from his cookie, and flashed angry eyes on his step-father for a moment, and said "he didn't know as that was any wonder. She had enough to make any woman sick."

"You shut up," said the father in increasing irritability; and the children slipped out of their seats and moved toward the door, keeping careful eyes on the father until they were fairly outside. Nettie felt her limbs trembling so that her knees knocked together under the table. But at last every crumb of toast was eaten, and every drop of tea swallowed, and Mr. Decker pushed himself back from the table, and spoke in a somewhat gentler tone: "Well, my girl, make yourself as comfortable as you can. I'm glad to see you. We need your help, you'll find, in more ways than one. You've been working for other folks long enough. It is a poor place you've come to, and that's a fact. I ain't what I used to be; I've been unfortunate. No fellow ever had worse luck. Everything has gone wrong with me ever since your mother died. A sick wife, and young ones to look after, and nobody to do a thing. It is a hard life, but you might as well rough it with the rest of us. You'll get along somehow, I s'pose. The rest of us always have. I've got to go out for awhile. You tell the old woman to fix up some place for you to sleep, and we'll do the best we can."

And he lounged away; Norm having left the table and the room some minutes before. And this was the father to whom Nettie Decker had come home!

She swallowed at the lump which seemed growing larger every minute in her throat. She had choked back a great many tears that afternoon. There was no time to cry. Some place must be fixed for her to sleep.

In the home that she had left, there was a little room with matting on the floor, and a little white bed in the corner, and a pretty toilet set that the carpenter's son had made her at odd times, and a wash bowl and pitcher that had been her present on her eleventh birthday, and a green rocking-chair that aunt Kate had sent her: not her own aunt Kate, but Mrs. Marshall's sister who had adopted her as a niece, and these things and many another little knickknack were all her own. The room was empty to-night; but then Nettie must not cry!

She began to gather the dishes and get them ready for washing. Just as she plunged her hands into the dishwater, the bedroom door opened, and her mother came out, stepping feebly, like one just recovering from severe illness.

"I'm dreadful weak," she said in answer to Nettie's inquiries, "but I guess I'm better than I have been in a good while. I've had a rest to-day; the first one I have had in three years. I don't know what made me give out so, all of a sudden. I tried to keep on my feet, but I couldn't do it no more than I could fly. You oughtn't to have to wash them dishes, child, with your pretty hands and your pretty dress. Oh, dear! I don't know what is to become of any of us."

"This is my work apron," said Nettie, trying to speak cheerily, "and I am used to this work: I always helped with the tea dishes at home." Then she plunged into the midst of the subject which was troubling her. "Father said I was to ask you where I was to sleep."

"He better ask himself!" said the wilted woman, rousing to sudden energy and indignation. "How does he think I know? There isn't the first rag to make a bed of, nor a spot to put it, if there was. I say it was a sin and a shame for him to send for you, and that's the truth! If he had one decent child who had a place to stay, where she would be took care of, he ought to have let you alone. You have come to an awful home, child. You have got to know the truth, and you might as well know it first as last. It is enough sight worse than you have seen to-night, though I dare say you think this is bad enough. You don't look nor act like what I was afraid of, and you must have had good friends who took care of you; and he ought to have let you alone. This is no place for a decent girl. It is bad enough for an old woman who has given up, and never expects to have anything decent any more. He won't provide any place for you, nor any clothes, and what we are to do with one more mouth to feed is more than I can see. I wouldn't grudge it to you, child, if we had it; but we are starved, half the time, and that's the living truth."

"I won't eat much," said poor Nettie, trembling and quivering, "and I will try very hard to help; but if you please, what makes things so? Can't father get work?"

"Work! of course he can; as much as he can do. He is as good a machinist to-day as there is in the shops; when they have a particular job they want him to do it. He works hard enough by spells; why, child, it's the drink. You didn't know it, did you? Well, you may as well know it first as last. He was nearer sober to-night than he has been in a week; but he wasn't so very sober or he wouldn't have been cross. He used to be good and kind as the best of them, and we had things decent. I never thought it would come to this, but it has, and it grows worse every day. Yes, you may well turn pale, and cry out. Turning pale won't do any good. And you may cry tears of blood, and them that sells the rum to poor foolish men will go right on selling it as long as they have money to pay, and kick them out when they haven't. That is the way it is done, and it keeps going on here year after year, homes ruined, and children made beggars, and them that have the making of the laws, go right on and let it be done. I've watched it. And I've tried, too. You needn't think I gave up and sat down to it without trying as hard as ever woman could to struggle against the curse; but I've give up now. Nothing is of any use. And the worst of it is my Norm is going the same road."

CHAPTER IV.
NEW FRIENDS.

AND then the poor woman who thought she had no more tears to shed, buried her face in her hands and shed some of the bitterest ones she ever did in her life.

Poor Nettie! she tried to turn comforter; tried to think of one cheering word to say; but what was there to cheer the wife of a drunkard? Or the daughter of a drunkard? Could it be possible that she, Nettie Decker, was that! Oh, dear! how often she had stood in the door, and with a kind of terrified fascination watched Jane Daker stealing home in the darkness, afraid to go in at the front door, lest her drunken father should see her and vent his wrath on her. Could she ever creep around in the dark and hide away from her own father? Wouldn't it be possible for her to go back home? She had not money enough to get there, but couldn't she work somehow, and earn money? She could write a letter to the folks at home and tell them the dreadful story, and they would surely find a way of sending for her. But then, money was not plenty in that home, and she began to understand that they had done a great deal for her, and that it had cost a good deal to pay her fare to this place. She had wondered, at the time, that her father did not send the money for her to come home, but she said to herself: "I suppose he did not know how much it would cost, and he will give it to me to send in my first letter. Perhaps he will give me a little bit more than it costs, too, for a little present for Jamie."

Oh, poor little girl! building hopes on a father like hers. She had not been at home half a day, but she knew now that no money would ever go back to the Marshalls in return for all they had done for her. Worse than that, she might not be able to get back to them herself. Would her father be likely to let her go? He had sent for her, and had told her during this first hour of their meeting, that she had worked for other people long enough. This made her heart swell with indignation.

Done enough for others, indeed! What had they not done for her? She never realized it half so plainly as she did to-night. "I will go back!" she muttered, setting the little bowl she was drying on the table with a determined thump. "I can't stay in such a place as this. I will write to Auntie Marshall this very night if I can get a chance, and she will contrive some way."

Certainly, Nettie in that mood could have no comfort for a weeping mother, and attempted none, after the first murmured word of pity. But meantime she knew very well that she could not go back home that night, and the present terror was, where was she to sleep?

Her mother went back into the bedroom after a few minutes of bitter weeping, and Nettie finished the work, then stood drearily in the doorway, wondering what she could do next, when a good, homely, motherly face looked out of the side window of the small house next their own, and a cheery voice spoke:

"Are you Joe Decker's little Nannie?"

"Yes'm," said Nettie, sadly, wondering drearily, even then, if it could be possible that this was so.

"Well," said the voice, "I calculated that you must be; though I never should have known you in the world, if I hadn't heard you was coming, you was such a mite of a thing when you went away. What a tall nice girl you've got to be. Your ma is sick, the children said. I've been away ironing all day, or I would have been in to see if I could help the poor thing any. I don't know her very much, but she is sickly, and has hard times now and then, and I'm sorry for her. Now what I was wondering is, where are they going to put you to sleep? The upper part of that house ain't finished off, is it? It is one big attic, ain't it, where Norm sleeps? I thought so. I suppose there could be quite a nice room made up there with a little work and a few dollars laid out, but your pa ain't done it, I'll be bound. And I knew there wasn't but one bedroom down-stairs, and I couldn't think how they would manage it."

"It isn't managed at all, ma'am," said Nettie, seeing that she seemed to wait for an answer, and there was nothing to say but the simple truth. "There is no place for me to sleep."

"You don't say! Now that's a shame. Well, now, what I was thinking was, that maybe you would like to sleep in the woodhouse chamber; it is a nice little room as ever was, and it opens right out of my Sarah Ann's room; so you wouldn't be lonesome. I haven't any manner of use for it, now my boy's gone away, and I just as soon you would sleep there as not until your folks get things fixed. You're a dreadful clean-looking little girl, and I like that. I'm a master hand to have clean things around me; Job says he believes I catch the flies and dust their wings before I let them go into my front room. Job is my husband, and that is his little joke at me, you know." And she laughed such a jolly little roly-poly sort of laugh that poor Nettie could not keep a smile from her troubled face. A refuge in the woodhouse chamber of this neat, good-natured-looking woman seemed like a bit of heaven to the homesick child.

"I am very much obliged to you, ma'am," she said respectfully; "I will tell my mother how kind you are, and I think she will be glad to accept the kindness for a few days. I—" and then Nettie suddenly stopped. It might not be well to say to this new friend that she would not need to trouble the woodhouse chamber long, for she meant to start for home as soon as a letter could travel there, and another travel back. Something might come in the way of this resolve, though it made her feel hot all over to think of such a possibility.

"Bless my heart!" said Mrs. Job Smith as Nettie vanished to consult her mother. "If that ain't as polite and pretty-spoken a child as ever I see in my life. She makes me think of our Jerry. To think of that child being Joe Decker's girl and coming back to such a home as he keeps! It is too bad! I am sure I hope they will let her sleep in the woodhouse chamber. It is the only spot where she will get any peace."

Mrs. Decker was only too glad to avail herself of her neighbor's kind offer. "It is good of her," she said gratefully to Nettie. "I wish to the land you could have such a comfortable room all the time; they are real clean-looking folks. You wouldn't suppose from the looks of this house that I cared for clean things, but I do, and I used to have them about me, too. I was as neat once as the best of them; but it takes clothes and soap and strength to be clean, and I have had none of 'em in so long that I have most forgot how to do anything decent."

"Soap?" said Nettie, wonderingly. She was beating up the poor rags which composed the bed in her mother's room, trying to get a little freshness into them.

"Yes, soap; I don't suppose you can imagine how it would seem not to have all the soap you wanted; I couldn't, either, once, but I tell you I save the pennies nowadays for bread, so that I need not see my children starve before my eyes. I would rather do without soap than bread; especially when our clothes are so worn out that there is nothing much to change with. Oh, I tell you when you get into a house where the men folks spend all they can get on beer or whiskey, there are not many pennies left. Mrs. Smith has been real kind; she sent the children in a bowl of soup one day when their father had gone off and not left a thing in the house, nor a cent to get anything with.

"And she has done two or three things like that lately; I'm grateful to her, but I'm ashamed to say so. I never expected to sink so low that I should be glad of the scraps which a poor neighbor like her could send in. Oh, no; they are not very poor. Why, they are rich as kings, come to compare them with us; but they are not grand folks at all; he is a teamster, and works hard every day; so does she; but he doesn't drink a drop, and they have a good many comfortable things. Their boy is away at school, and their girl, Sarah Ann, is learning a dressmaker's trade. You will have a comfortable bed in there, and I'm glad of it."

And now it was eight o'clock. Susie and Sate were asleep in their trundle bed, the tired Nettie having coaxed them to let her give them a splendid bath first, making the idea pleasant to them by producing from her trunk a cunning little cake of perfumed soap. They looked "as pretty as pictures," the sad-eyed mother said, as she bent over them when they were asleep, with their moist hair in loose waves, and their clean faces flushed with health. "They are real pretty little girls," she added earnestly, as she turned away. "He might be proud of them. And he used to be, too. When Sate was a baby, he said she had eyes like you, and he used to kiss her and tell her she was pretty, until I was afraid he would spoil her; but there isn't the least danger of that now. He never notices either of them except to slap them or growl at them."

"How came father to begin to drink?" Nettie asked the question timidly, hesitating over the last word; it seemed such a dreadful word to add to a father's name.

"Don't ask me, child; I don't know. They say he always drank a little; a glass of beer now and then. I knew he did when I married him, but I thought it was no more than all hard-working men did. I never thought much about it. I know it never entered my head that he could be a drunkard. I'd have been too afraid for Norm if I had dreamed of such a thing as that.

"He kept increasing the drinks, little by little—it grows on them, it seems, the habit does; they say that is the way with all the drinks; I didn't know it. I never was taught about these things. If I had been, I think sometimes my life would have been very different. I know I wouldn't have walked right into the fire with my one boy, anyhow. I'm talking to you, child, as though you were a woman grown, and you seem most like a woman to me, you are so handy, and quiet, and nice-looking. I was sorry you were coming, because I thought you would just be an added plague; and now I am sorry for your own sake."

Nettie hesitated greatly over the next question. It was a very hard one to ask this sick and discouraged mother, but she must know the whole of the misery by which she was surrounded. "Does Norman drink too?"

"Norm," said Mrs. Decker, dropping into the one chair, and putting her hand to her heart as though there was something stabbing her there, "Norm has been led away by your father. He was a bright little fellow, and your father took to him amazingly. I used to tell him his own little girls would have reason to be jealous of his step-son. He took Norm with him everywhere, from the first. And taught him to do odd things, for a little fellow, and was proud of his singing, and his speaking, and all that. And when Susie there, was a baby, and I was kept close at home with her, and Norm would tear around in the evening and wake her up, I slipped into the way of letting him go out with your father to spend the evenings; I didn't know they spent them in bar-rooms, or groceries where they sold beer. I never dreamed of such a thing. Your father talked about meeting the men, and I thought they met at some of the houses where there wasn't a baby to cry, and talked their work over, or the news, you know. And there he was teaching Norm to drink. He was a pretty little fellow, and he would sing comic songs, and then they would treat him to the sugar in their glasses! When I found it out, he had got to liking the stuff, and I don't suppose a day goes by without his taking more or less of it now. He never gets as bad as your father; but he will. He is never cross and ugly to me, nor to the children, but he will be. It grows on him. It grows on them all. And to think that I led him into the trap! If I had stayed in the country where I was brought up, or if I had left him with his grandfather, as he wanted me to, he might have been saved. The grandfather is gone now, and so is the farm. Your father got hold of my share of that, and lost it somehow. He didn't mean to, and that soured him, and he drank the harder and we are going down to the very bottom of everything as fast as we can."

It seemed to poor Nettie that they must have reached the bottom now. She could not imagine any lower depths than these.

She made up the poor bed as well as she could, and then went back to the kitchen to see what could be done about breakfast. Her new mother was evidently too weak and sick to be troubled with the thought of it, and while she stayed, Nettie resolved that she would help the poor woman all she could. She went out into the yard to examine, and discovered to her satisfaction that there must be a cooper's shop just around the corner, for the chips lay thick. She gathered some for the morning fire, determined in her mind that she would buy a few potatoes at the grocery in the morning! In the cupboard she had found a cup of sour milk; this she had carefully treasured with an eye to breakfast, and she now looked into her purse to see if she could spare pennies for a quart of flour. If she could, then some excellent cakes would be the result. And now everything that she knew how to do towards the next day's needs was attended to, and she went out in the moonlight, and sat down on the lowest step of the back stoop, and did what she had been longing to do all the afternoon—cried as though her poor young heart was breaking.

Astride a saw-horse in the yard which belonged to Job Smith, and which was separated from the stoop where she sat only by a low fence, was a curly-headed boy, who had come there apparently to whittle and whistle and watch her. He was not there when she sat down and buried her head in her apron. She did not notice his whistling, though he made it loud and shrill on purpose to attract her attention, He knew quite a little about her by this time. He had come upon the boys of the Grammar School in the midst of their afternoon recess and heard Harry Stuart interrupt little Ted Barrows who was the youngest one in the class and wrote the best compositions. They were gathered under a tree listening to Ted, while he read them "The Story of An Hour," which was especially interesting because it had some of their own experiences skilfully woven in.

"Hold on," Harry was saying, just as the whistling boy appeared within hearing. "You didn't make that thing up; you got it from the Deckers; that is what is just going to happen there. Old Joe's Nan is coming home this very day, and she is about as old as the girl you've got in your story, and is freckled, I dare say; most girls are."

"I didn't even know old Joe Decker had a girl to come home!" said little Ted, looking injured. "I made every word of it out of my own mind."

But the boys did not hear him; their interest had been called in another direction. "Is that so? Is Nan Decker coming home? My! What a house to come to. Mother said only yesterday that she hoped the folks who had her would keep her forever. What is she coming for? Who told you?"

"Why, she is coming because Joe thinks that will be another way to plague the old lady. At least that is what my mother thinks. Mrs. Decker told her once that when Joe had been drinking more than usual he always threatened to send for Nan; but she didn't think he would. And now it seems he has. I heard it from the old fellow himself. He was telling Norm about it, while I stood waiting for father's saw. He said she was coming in the stage this afternoon; that she had worked for other folks long enough and it was time he had some good of her himself. I pity her, I tell you."

Then the whistler had come out from behind the trees, and said good-afternoon, and asked a few questions. The boys had answered him civilly enough, but in a way which showed that they did not count him as one of them. The fact was, he was a good deal of a stranger. He had been in town only a few weeks, and he did not go to school, and he boarded with or lived with, the Smiths, who lived next door to the Deckers, and were nice enough people, but did not have much to do with the fathers and mothers of these boys, and—well, the fact was, the boys did not know whether to take this new comer in, and make him welcome, or not. They sort of liked him; he was good-natured, and accommodating so far as they knew, but they knew very little about him. He asked a good many questions about the expected Nan Decker. He had never heard of her before. Since he was to live next door to her, it might be pleasant to know what sort of a person she was. But the boys could tell him very little. Seven years, at their time of life, blots out a good many memories. They only knew that she was Nan Decker who went away when her mother died, and who had lived with the Marshalls ever since; and all agreed in being sorry for her that she was obliged at last to come home.

The whistling boy walked away, after having cross-questioned first one, and then another, and learned that they knew nothing. He was on his way to the woods for one of his long summer rambles. He felt a trifle lonely, and wished that the boys had asked him to sit down under the trees and have a good time with them.

JERRY ON ONE OF HIS SUMMER RAMBLES.

He would have liked to hear Ted's composition, he said to himself; the boy had a sweet face, and a head that looked as though he might be going to make a smart man, one of these days. What was the matter with those fellows, he wondered, that they were not more cordial?

He thought about it quite awhile, then plunged into the mosses and ferns and gathered some lovely specimens, which he arranged in the box he carried slung over his shoulder, and forgot all about the boys, and poor little Nan Decker. On the way home, in the glow of the setting sun, he thought of her again, and wondered if she had come, and if she would be a sorrowful and homesick little girl. It seemed queer to think of being homesick when one came home! But then, it was only a home in name; he had not lived next door to it for five weeks without discovering that, and the little girl's mother was dead! Poor Nan Decker! A shadow came over his bright face for a moment as he thought of this. His mother was dead. He resolved to speak a kind word to the little girl the very first time that he had a chance. And here in the moonlight was his chance.

He stopped whistling at last and spoke: "If it is anything about which I can help, I shall be very glad to do it." A kind, cheerful voice. Nettie looked up quickly and choked back her tears. She was not one to cry, if there were to be any lookers-on.

"I guess you are homesick," said the boy from, his horse's back; "and that isn't any wonder. I'm homesick myself, nearly every night, especially if it is moonlight. I don't know what there is about the moon that chokes a fellow up so, but I've noticed it often; but then I feel all right in the morning."

"Are you away from your home?"

"I should say I was! Or rather home has gone away from me. I haven't any home in particular, only my father, and he is away out in California. I couldn't go there with him, and since my school closed I am waiting here for him to come back. It is home, you know, wherever he is. He doesn't expect to be back yet for months. So you and I ought to be pretty good friends, we are such near neighbors. I live right next door to you. We ought to be introduced. You are Nannie Decker, I suppose, and I am Jerry Mack at your service. I don't wonder you are homesick; folks always are, the first night."

"My name is Nanette," said Nettie, gently, "but people who like me most always say Nettie: and it isn't being homesick that makes me feel so badly—though I am homesick; but it is being scared, and astonished, and, oh! everything. Nothing is as I thought it would be; and there are things about it that I did not understand at all, or maybe I wouldn't have come; and now I am here, I don't know what to do." She was very near crying again, in spite of a watcher.

"I know," he said, nodding his head, and speaking in a grave, sympathetic voice. "Job Smith—that is the man I am staying with—has told me how it used to be with your father. He says he was a very nice father indeed. I am as sorry for you as I can be. But after all, I wouldn't give up if I were you; and I should be real glad that I had come home to help him. He needs a great deal of help. Folks reform, you know. Why, people who are a great deal worse than your father has ever been yet, have turned right around and become splendid men. If I were you I would go right to work to have him reform. Then there's Norm—he needs help, too; and he ought to have it before he gets any older, because it would be so much easier for him to get started right now."

"I don't know the least thing to do," said Nettie; but she dried her eyes on her neat little handkerchief as she spoke, and sat up straight, and looked with earnest eyes at the boy on the other side the fence. This sort of talk interested and helped her.

"No; of course you don't. You haven't studied these things up, I suppose. But there is a great deal to do. My father is a temperance man, and I have heard him talk. I know a hundred things I would like to do, and a few that I can do. I'll tell you what it is, Nettie, say we start a society, you and I, and fight this whole thing?

"We can begin with little bits of plans which we can carry out now, and let them grow as fast as we can follow them and see what we can do. Is it a bargain?"

"There is nothing I would like so well, if you will only show me how," said Nettie, and her eyes were shining.

It was wonderful what a weight these few words seemed to lift from her troubled heart. The boy's face had grown more thoughtful. He seemed in doubt just how to express what he wanted to say next.

"I don't know how you feel about it," he said as last, "but I know somebody who would be sure to help in anything of this kind that we tried to do—show us how, you know, and make ways for us to get money, and all that."

"Who is it?"

Nettie spoke quickly now, for her heart was beating loud and fast. Was there somebody in this town who could be asked to come to the rescue, and who was willing to give such hearty help as that? If such were the case, she could see that a great deal might be accomplished. She waited for her new friend's answer, but he looked down on the stick he was whittling and gravely sharpened the end to a very fine point, before he spoke again.

"I don't know what you think about such things, but I mean—God. I know he is on our side in this business, don't you?"