upon a chair.

"Saints an' angels, child! and what have ye got there?" exclaimed
his mother, bending over the something that filled Teddy's arms and
lap.

"It's a little girl, mother; and I'm feared she's dead!" panted
Teddy.

"A little girl, an' she's dead! Oh, wurra, wurra, Teddy Ginniss,
that iver I should be own mother to a murderer! An' is it yersilf
that kilt the purty darlint?"

"Meself, mother!" exclaimed the boy indignantly. "Sure and it
wasn't; and I wouldn't 'a thought you'd have needed to ask. I found
her on a doorstep in Tanner's Court: and first I thought she was
asleep, and so I shook her to tell her to go home before the Charley
got her; and then, when she wouldn't wake up, I saw she was either
fainted or dead; and I fetched her home to you,--and it's you that
go for to call me a murtherer! Oh, oh!"

As he uttered these last sounds, the boy's wide mouth puckered up in
a comical look of distress, and he rubbed the cuff of his jacket
across his blinking eyes. Mrs. Ginniss gave him a slap, on the
shoulder, intended to be playful, but actually heavy enough to have
thrown a slighter person out of the chair.

"Whisht, honey, whisht!" said she. "And it's an ould fool I am wid
me fancies an' me frights. But let us looks at the poor little
crather ye've brought home to me. Sure and it was like yees, Teddy,