There was a long pause. Then, "Have it as you like," said Michael.
"Of course, the boys will bother a good deal, if they go free."

"Certainly they would," said Martha. "We would never know where they
would crop up, especially that Ivan one."

"Suppose they do not eat?" asked Patro.

"Eat, eat!" cried Martha. "Well, know you nothing of boys! And they
will suspect nothing. You are brutes, brutes, remember, and I so kind
and so sorry," she laughed. "They will believe all I say," she added.

Michael nodded. "Then it is settled," he said.

In the United States, every possible precaution is taken to protect
children from harm. Laws are made especially for their safety;
societies exist in every town and city to look after them. They go
unharmed through the streets. Noble men and women give their lives to
visiting the poorest districts and making easier the lot of the
unfortunate ones they find there. Special cases are frequently written
up in the papers, and help found for them in that way. In factories,
shops, stores, asylums, in the streets, in the slums, every possible,
effort is made to make the lot of children an easier and happier one.

In a great number of the European countries, the case is different.
There are no laws, for instance, governing the age at which a child
shall be put to work. In fact, in order to keep body and soul
together, children labor from the time they are babies. They do the
work of farm animals when their little hands can scarcely grasp the
implements of toil. There are many, oh, so many of them; and they are