given her a new sensitiveness.

"Do you mean--me?" she stammered. "That you wished I
hadn't--noticed--you?"

"No, no, kiddie! I meant--some one quite different from you. Some one
that hadn't ought to notice. I was glad to have you speak, only--I
thought at first it was some one from home."

"Oh, then you don't live here, either, any more than I do--I mean, for
keeps."

"Oh, yes, I live here now," sighed the girl; "that is, if you can call
it living--what I do."

"What do you do?" asked Pollyanna interestedly.

"Do? I'll tell you what I do," cried the other, with sudden
bitterness. "From morning till night I sell fluffy laces and perky
bows to girls that laugh and talk and KNOW each other. Then I go home
to a little back room up three flights just big enough to hold a lumpy
cot-bed, a washstand with a nicked pitcher, one rickety chair, and me.
It's like a furnace in the summer and an ice box in the winter; but
it's all the place I've got, and I'm supposed to stay in it--when I
ain't workin'. But I've come out to-day. I ain't goin' to stay in that
room, and I ain't goin' to go to any old library to read, neither.
It's our last half-holiday this year--and an extra one, at that; and
I'm going to have a good time--for once. I'm just as young, and I like
to laugh and joke just as well as them girls I sell bows to all day.
Well, to-day I'm going to laugh and joke."