extra warmth. Lucina's hood was of quilted blue silk, and her smooth
yellow curls flowed from under it quite down to her waist. Moreover,
her mother had carefully arranged four, two on each side, to escape
from the frill of her hood in front and fall softly over her pink
cheeks. Lucina's face was very fair and sweet--the face of a good and
gentle little girl, who always minded her mother and did her daily
tasks.

Her dark blue eyes, set deeply under seriously frowning childish
brows, surveyed Jerome with innocent wonder; her pretty mouth drooped
anxiously at the corners. Jerome knew her well enough, although he
had never before exchanged a word with her. She was little Lucina
Merritt, whose father had money and bought her everything she wanted,
and whose mother rigged her up like a puppet, as he had heard his
mother say.

"No, ain't sick," he said, in a half-intelligible grunt. A cross
little animal poked into wakefulness in the midst of its nap in the
sun might have responded in much the same way. Gallantry had not yet
developed in Jerome. He saw in this pretty little girl only another
child, and, moreover, one finely shod and clothed, while he went
shoeless and threadbare. He looked sulkily at her blue silk hood,
pulled his old cap down with a twitch to his black brows, and
shrugged himself closer to the warm rock.

The little girl eyed his bare toes. "Be you cold?" she ventured.

"No, ain't cold," grunted Jerome. Then he caught sight of something
in her hand--a great square of sugar-gingerbread, out of which she
had taken only three dainty bites as she came along, and in spite of