"Succour--succour," continued the child, "my father and mother. Is she gone to heaven, and does she come to look at me in the night, and kiss me? I don't think that she would whip me so, and--and--oh! pray don't beat me for it. I can't help it. Oh! I can't help it," and then once again, the little thin hands were pressed upon the quivering lips to thrust back the bitter heart-wrung wail that would make itself heard. No child's cry; but the moaning of a bruised heart, forced and rendered premature in its feelings by the long course of cruelty to which it had been subjected. A stranger might have listened, and then have gone away believing that his feelings had been moved to pity by the anguished utterances of a woman in distress. Tim hopped from his board, half bewildered, and quite in trouble, to kiss and caress the child, smoothing her hair, patting her cheeks, and holding her tightly to his breast. "Come, my pretty," he whispered, "you mustn't, you know. It does hurt me so, and ain't I as good as a father? And didn't you promise me as you'd love me very, very much? And now you're raining down tears, and melting all the sugar out of a fellow's nature till you'll make him cross as--Polish away, my pretty." With two bounds Tim was back in his place, and little Pine again bent over her task; for there was a heavy step upon the staircase, and as it stopped at the door, Tim grunted, and slowly shuffled off his board to replace his iron in the fire after giving it a loud clink upon the stand. "Now, my dear," said Tim, loudly, "we ain't getting on so fast as we oughter. `Bear no malice.'" "`Bear no malice,'" repeated the child, looking up at him, with a quaint smile upon her little pinched lips. "`Nor hatred in my heart,'" said Tim; and then dolefully, "why don't you look at your work?" "`Nor hatred in my heart,'" said the child, whose little face, then again upturned, showed that, if there were truth in looks, malice or hatred had never entered her breast. "Louder, ever so much," whispered Tim, "and don't yer get whipped whilst I'm at Pellet's, there's a pet. `Keep my hands from picking and stealing,'" he continued, aloud. "`From picking and stealing,'" said the child, softly. "She'd better, that's all I can say," came from the doorway; and Mrs Ruggles closed the portal, and then swung round again, right about face, and confronted her husband, "perhaps some one else will keep his tongue from evil-speaking, lying, and so on." "I'm blessed," muttered Tim, "that's rather hot." "Of course it is," exclaimed Mrs Ruggles, who only caught the latter part of the sentence, and applied it to the fire. "Such waste of coals. I suppose that girl's been shovelling them on as if they cost nothing." "No, my dear--me--it was me," said Tim, who well enough knew that the fire had been made up by Mrs Ruggles herself: but he was a terrible liar. "Then you ought to have known better."