Kate was three years old when her mother died. It was no time then for Grandma Linton to be bothered with the rheumatics. It was one thing to be a worn old woman with a big strong daughter to do the chores for you, quite another to have this young life crying out to you for food and shelter and care, a winsome elf putting two plump little arms around one's neck and whispering with her mouth close to your ear, "I love oo, Grannie." With the music of the baby voice in her ears the widow girded up her loins and went out scrubbing, cleaning, became janitress of the tenement in which she and Kate occupied a two-room flat--anything so that the thorns should be plucked from the path of the child's blithesome feet. Seven years she strove for her "lamb." When Kate was ten and getting to be a big girl, she faced the fact that she could do it no longer. She was getting too old. What struggles it cost, knowing her, I can guess; but she brought that sacrifice too. Friends who were good to the poor undertook to pay the rent. She could earn enough to keep them; that she knew. But they soon heard that the two were starving. Poor neighbors were sharing their meals with them, who themselves had scarce enough to go around; and from Kate's school came the report that she was underfed. Her grandmother's haggard face told the same story plainly. There was still the "county" where no one starves, however else she fares, and they tried to make her see that it was her duty to give up and let the child be cared for in an institution. But against that Grandma Linton set her face like flint. She was her Maggie's own, and stay with her she would, as she had promised, as long as she could get around at all. And with that she reached for her staff--her old enemy, the rheumatics, was just then getting in its worst twinges, as if to mock her--and set out to take up her work. But it was all a vain pretense, and her friends knew it. They were at their wits' end until it occurred to them to lump two families in one. There was another widow, a younger woman with four small children, the youngest a baby, who was an unsolved problem to them. The mother had work, and was able to do it; but she could not be spared from home as things were. They brought the two women together. They liked one another, and took eagerly to the "club" plan. In the compact that was made Mrs. Linton became the housekeeper of the common home, with five children to care for instead of one, while the mother of the young brood was set free to earn the living for the household. Mother Linton took up her new and congenial task with the whole-hearted devotion with which she had carried out her promise to Maggie. She mothered the family of untaught children and brought them up as her own. They had been running wild, but grew well-mannered and attractive, to her great pride. They soon accepted her as their veritable "grannie," and they call her that to this day.