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.

She seemed of a mind to trip off to this woman, and as long as his own
mother was safe, it did not greatly matter to Tommy whom she chose, but
if it was this one, she was going the wrong way about it. You cannot
snap them up in the street.

The proper course was to track her to her house, which he proceeded to
do, and his quarry, who was looking about her anxiously, as if she had
lost something, gave him but a short chase. In the next street to the
one in which they had first seen her, a street so like it that Tommy
might have admired her for knowing the difference, she opened the door
with a key and entered, shutting the door behind her. Odd to tell, the
child had pointed to this door as the one she would stop at, which