"There's some crusts left up on the mantel," answered Melie. "Bob, you just climb up and fetch 'em down, and I'll nurse the baby, and, Fan, you come right away and sit by me." Mattie picked up the dirty, tear-stained baby, and seated herself on the only chair in the room. She had been to school all the morning, and, while ostensibly puzzling her little brain with the mysteries of "the three R's," her heart had been full of fear for those little ones in the house. What if her mother should leave them with the door unlocked, and Fan and baby should find their way headlong down those dark, steep stairs? Or, suppose the window in their room should by any means become unfastened, and one of them should fall to the pavement beneath; for Mattie remembered that, only the week before, a drunken mother had let her baby drop from her arms out of the window at the top of the house into the court below, from whence it had been picked up a shapeless, bleeding mass. So she was greatly relieved that everything had gone well in her absence. As for Fan's and baby's crying, that was to be expected while she was away. "I shan't go to school this afternoon; 'taint to be expected as I can, although teacher'll be just mad, being as it's near 'xamination time," declared Mattie. "That's prime, Mattie! What'll we do? Not stay up here all the time?" cried Bob. "In course not. We'll have our dinner, and then we'll just get a breath of air in the park. It'll do baby good; won't it, darling?" said Mattie, stooping over her puny charge as fondly as if he were the bonniest baby in the land, instead of a feeble, wan-faced infant, upon whom, as indeed upon each of the group which surrounded him, there was stamped the unmistakable imprint of an inherited curse. "I'm glad mammie's out, Mattie. I wish you was our mammie, and could take us clean away," said Bob, hanging about Mattie's chair. "When I get bigger and can earn money, that's what I'm going to do, you know, Bob. Me, and Melie, and you'll just work and keep the children, and we won't have 'em knocked about, poor little mites, will we?" "No, we won't, but I wish we was big enough now," sighed Bob, to whom the tempting prospect was sufficiently familiar and delightful to help him to bear bravely the privation of his daily lot. "Well, we ain't, so it's no use wishing we was," responded matter-of-fact Mattie; "but I'll tell you what I do wish, and that is as mammie and daddie'd just turn over a new leaf, and stop the drinking. Then we'd never need to be talking of running away and leaving 'em; for I tell you, we'd all pretty soon know the difference." "Tell us what a nice home we'd have afore long, and what jolly things we'd get to eat," said Bob. "Don't you be so greedy, Bob. 'Tain't the want of good things to eat as troubles me so much. It's the rows, and the swearing, and the kicking, and beating, as takes the life out of one," and Mattie's face grew dark as she spoke.