these and other wonders, if you would know, ask not a dull historian, nor even go to Thrums, but to those rather who have been boys and girls there and now are exiles.  Such a one Tommy knows, an unhappy woman, foolish, not very lovable, flung like a stone out of the red quarry upon a land where it cannot grip, and tearing her heart for a sight of the home she shall see no more.  From her Tommy had his pictures, and he colored them rarely.

Never before had he such a listener.  “Oh, dagont, dagont!” he would cry in ecstasy over these fair scenes, and she, awed or gurgling with mirth according to the nature of the last, demanded “’Nother, ’nother!” whereat he remembered who and what she was, and showing her a morsel of the new one, drew her to more distant parts, until they were so far from his street that he thought she would never be able to find the way back.

His intention had been, on reaching such a spot, to desert her promptly, but she gave him her hand in the muff so confidingly that against his judgment he fell a-pitying the trustful mite who was wandering the world in search of a mother, and so easily diddled on the whole that the chances were against her finding one before morning.  Almost unconsciously he began to look about him for a suitable one.

They were now in a street much nearer to his own home than the spurts from spot to spot had led him to suppose.  It was new to him, but he recognized it as the acme of fashion by those two sure signs; railings with most of their spikes in place, and cards scored with, the word “Apartments.”  He had discovered such streets as this before when in Shovel’s company, and they had watched the toffs go out and in, and it was a lordly sight, for first the toff waggled a rail that was loose at the top and then a girl, called the servant, peeped at him from below, and then he pulled the rail again, and then the door opened from the inside, and you had a glimpse of wonder-land with a place for hanging hats on.  He had not contemplated doing anything so handsome for the girl as this, but why should he not establish her here?  There were many possible mothers in view, and thrilling with a sense of his generosity he had almost fixed on one but mistrusted the glint in her eye and on another when she saved herself by tripping and showing an undarned heel.

He was still of an open mind when the girl of a sudden cried, gleefully, “Ma-ma, ma-ma!” and pointed, with her muff, across the street.  The word was as meaningless to Tommy as mother had been to her, but he saw that she was drawing his attention to a woman some thirty yards away.

“Man—­man!” he echoed, chiding her ignorance; “no, no, you blether, that ain’t a man, that’s a woman; that’s woman—­woman.”

“Ooman—­ooman,” the girl repeated, docilely, but when she looked again, “Ma-ma, ma-ma,” she insisted, and this was Tommy’s first lesson that however young you catch them they will never listen to reason.