The child crept back again to the window, and watched the little pools of water in the streets, as the rain-drops dimpled them, and saw, for the hundredth time, the grocer's boy carrying home a brown-paper parcel for some customers, and eating something from it as he went along; and listened to the milkman, who thumped so loudly on the back gates, and seemed always in such a tearing hurry; and saw the baker open the lid of his boxes, and let the steam escape from the smoking hot cakes and pies. Nettie wished she could have some of them, but she had long since learned _only to wish_; and then she saw the two little sisters who went by to school every morning, and who were now cuddling, laughingly together, under a great big umbrella, which the naughty wind was trying to turn inside out, and to get away from them; and then Nettie thought of Katy, and wished she had Katy to play with her, when mamma wrote such a long, long time; and then little Nettie drew such a heavy sigh, that Ruth dashed down her pen, and taking her in her arms and kissing her, told her about, "Mistress McShuttle, Who lived in a coal-scuttle, Along with her dog and her cat, What she did there, I can't tell, But I know very well, That none of the party were fat." And then she narrated the exciting adventures of "The Wise Men of Gotham," who went to sea in that rudderless bowl, and suffered shipwreck and "total _lass_ of life," as the newsboys (God bless their rough-and-ready faces) call it; and then little Nettie's snowy lids drooped over her violet eyes, and she was far away in the land of dreams, where there are no little hungry girls, or tired, scribbling mammas. Ruth laid the child gently on her little bed, and resumed her pen; but the spell was broken, and "careful and troubled about many things" she laid it down again, and her thoughts ran riot. Pushing aside her papers, she discovered two unopened letters which Mr. Lescom had handed her, and which she had in the hurry of finishing her next article, quite forgotten. Breaking the seal of the first, she read as follows: "TO 'FLOY.' "I am rough old man, Miss, and not used to writing or talking to ladies. I don't know who you are, and I don't ask; but I take 'The Standard,' and I like your pieces. I have a family of bouncing girls and boys; and when we've all done work, we get round the fire of an evening, while one of us reads your pieces aloud. It may not make much difference to you what an old man thinks, but I tell you those pieces have got the real stuff in 'em, and so I told my son John the other night; and _he_ says, and _I_ say, and neighbor Smith, who comes in to hear 'em, says, that you ought to make a book of them, so that your readers may keep them. You can put me down for three copies, to begin with; and if every subscriber to 'The Standard' feels as I do, you might make a plum by the operation. Suppose, now, you think of it?