"Why not give up at once, instead of trying to keep soul and body together by working for the slop-shops?" muttered Mrs. Grubb, as her customer withdrew. "She'd a great sight better go with her children to the poor-house than keep them half starving under people's noses at this rate, and compelling us, who have a little feeling left, to keep them from dying outright with hunger! It's too bad! There's that Berlaps, who grinds the poor seamstresses, who work for him to death, and makes them one-half of their time beggars at our stores for something for their children to eat. He is building two houses in Roxbury at this very moment; and out of what? Out of the money of which he has robbed these poor women. Fifteen cents for a pair of trowsers with pockets in them! Ten cents for shirts and drawers; and everything at that rate! Is it any wonder they are starving, and he growing rich? Curse him, and all like him! I could see them hung!" And the woman set her teeth and clenched her hand in momentary, but impotent rage. In the mean time, Mrs. Gaston hurried home with the food she had obtained. She occupied the upper room of a narrow frame house near the river, for which she paid a rent of three dollars a month. It was small and comfortless; but the best her slender means could provide. Two children were playing on the floor when she entered, the one about four, and the other a boy who looked as if he might be nearly ten years of age. On the bed lay Ella, the sick child to whom the mother had alluded both to the tailor and the shop-keeper. She turned wishfully upon her mother her young bright eyes as she entered, but did not move or utter a word. The children, who had been amusing themselves upon the floor, sprang to their feet, and, catching hold of the basket she brought in with her, ascertained in a moment its contents. "Fish and taters! fish and taters!" cried the youngest, a little girl, clapping her hands and dancing about the floor. "Won't we have some dinner now?" said Henry, the oldest boy, looking up into his mother's face with eager delight, as he laid his hands upon her arm. "Yes, my children, you shall have a good dinner, and that right quickly," returned the mother, in a voice half choked with emotion, as she threw off her bonnet and proceeded to cook the coarse provisions she had obtained at the sacrifice of so much feeling. It did not take long to boil the fish and potatoes, which were eaten with a keen relish by two of the children, Emma and Harry. The gruel prepared for Ella, from the flour obtained at Mrs. Grubb's, did not much tempt the sickly appetite of the child. She sipped a few spoonfuls, and then turned from the bowl which her mother held for her at the bedside. "Eat more of it, dear," said Mrs. Gaston. "It will make you feel better." "I'm not very hungry now, mother," answered Ella. "Don't it taste good to you?" "Not very good."