"Child, stop. Tell me exact, as you never told before. Is Elbow Lane a 'slum'?" "'Deed I don't know, 'cause I never heard tell of a 'slum' 'fore. It's the cutest little street ever was. Why, you can 'most reach acrost from one side to the other. Me an' Billy has often tried. It's got the loveliest crook in it, right here where we be; an' one side runs out one way an' t'other toward the river. Why, grandpa, Posy Jane says onct--onct, 'fore anybody here was livin', the Lane was a cow-path an' the cows was drove down it to the river to drink. Maybe she's lyin'. 'Seems if she must be, 'cause now there ain't no cows nor nothin' but milk-carts an' cans in corner stores, an' buildin's where onct she says was grass--grass, grandpa, do you hear?" "Yes, I hear, mate. But the folks, the neighbors. A slum, deary, I guess a slum is only where wicked people live. I don't know, really, for we had no such places on the broad high sea. Are our folks in the Lane wicked, daughter?" "Grandpa!" she cried, indignantly. "When there's such a good, good woman, Jane's sister Meg-Laundress, what washes for us just 'cause I mend her things. An' tailor-Jake who showed me to do a buttonhole an' him all doubled up with coughin'; an' Billy Buttons who gives us a paper sometimes, only neither of us can read it; an' Nick, the parson, who helps me sort my goobers; an' Posy Jane, that's a kind o' mother to everybody goin'. Don't the hull kerboodle of 'em treat you like you was a prince in a storybook, as I've heard Billy tell about? Huh! Nice folks? I should think they was. Couldn't be any nicer in the hull city. Couldn't, for sure, an' I say so, I, Glory Beck." "And all very poor, mate, terrible, desperate poor; an' ragged an' dirty an' swearers, an' not fit for my pet to mix with. Never go to church nor Sunday-school, nor----Eh, little mate?" persisted the old man, determined to get at the facts of the case at last. Glory was troubled. In what words could she best defend her friends and convince her strangely anxious guardian that Elbow folks were wholly what they should be? Since she could remember she had known no other people, and if all were not good as she had fancied them, at least all were good to her. With all her honest loyal heart she loved them, and saw virtues in them which others, maybe, would not have seen. With a gesture of perplexity, she tossed her head and clasped her hands, demanding: