which she would push him roughly from her knee, and fall into
hurt silence. Once, when he was five years old, she came in to
dinner hot from a morning in the Works, her moist forehead grimy
with dust, and bent over to kiss him; at which the little boy
wrinkled up his nose and turned his face aside.

"What's the matter?" his mother said; and called sharply to the
nurse: "I won't have any highfalutin' business in this boy! Get
it out of him." Then resolutely she took Blair's little chin in
her hand--a big, beautiful, powerful hand, with broken and
blackened nails--and turning his wincing face up, rubbed her
cheek roughly against his. "Get over your airs!" she said, and
sat down and ate her dinner without another word to Blair or any
one else. But the next day, as if to purchase the kiss he would
not give, she told him he was to have an "allowance." The word
had no meaning to the little fellow, until she showed him two
bright new dollars and said he could buy candy with them; then
his brown eyes smiled, and he held up his lips to her. It was at
that moment that money began to mean something to him. He bought
the candy, which he divided with Nannie, and he bought also a
present for his mother,--a bottle of cologne, with a tiny
calendar tied around its neck by a red ribbon. "The ribbon is
pretty," he explained shyly. She was so pleased that she
instantly gave him another dollar, and then put the long green
bottle on her painted pine bureau, between two of his
photographs.

In the days when the four children played in the orchard, and had
lessons with Miss White, in the school-room in Mr. Ferguson's
garret, and were "treated" by Blair to candy or pink ice-cream--