"Yes, Star," returned the mother, now showing a little more interest in the conversation than she had shown in any thing before--unless it was, perhaps, her drunken husband. "Mother?" "Yes, Star." "That is twenty-four dollars a month; that will keep me in clothing, and plenty for the children to eat." "Yes, Star," said the mother, as she rose from her chair, with the suckling still hanging to her breast, and walked across the floor, for no purpose whatever, other than that perhaps the performance might dissolve her cold brooding into a semblance of interest in her material welfare. Then she sat down again and rocked to and fro with the rockerless chair, as a jolting dose of soothing syrup for the pain that had suddenly twisted the child's mouth into a howling breadth. "And mother," continued Star, "the woman gave me the address of a rich family that wants a maid for a young lady, or a cook, or something else, I forget which." "Yes, Star." "And she said I could get the job if I go at once." "Yes, Star," responded the mother between the infinitisimal intervals of the noise of the thumping chair and the yelling child. "And mother, she said they live in a grand house as big as all our forty shanties here put together." "Yes," said the mother. "And she said it was lit up by electric lights, and had steam heat, and furniture as grand as any place, mother--as grand as any king's palace, mother. I am going tomorrow, mother." "Yes," returned the mother, as she turned the yelling child over her knee and gave it two or three smacks, causing it to become so red in the face that its phiz shone more brightly than the lambent rays that filtered through the smoky chimney of the kerosene lamp sitting on the table. "And she said, mother," still pursued Star, as she went about among the battered pans and rattled the cracked and broken dishes she was displaying on the family board, the while stirring the frying potatoes in the sheet-iron skillet, and watching the coffee pot that it did not boil away all the aroma, "that the young lady who wants a maid is so very handsome and so fine that I cannot sleep till I get there." "Yes," croaked the mother, a little irritated, it appeared, by all these revelations that Star was unfolding before her; for nothing disturbed her so, it seemed, as the mention of such hifalutin things, although she herself, in all her lowliness, never disparaged, by word, anybody who had more than she, being a woman absolutely contented with her lot. "May I go?" asked Star, who always felt it a matter of filial respect to defer to her parents' beck and call. "Yes," dolefully replied the mother, as she rocked the squalling brat on the rockerless chair with greater vigor than had been her practice. * * * * *