"Don't go," pleaded Letty, feeling that she had a certain responsibility in the matter. "I should mind, as well as Sally; for, if Aunt Liddy and I helped put you in a good way, it would be a disappointment to have you go wrong. Please stop here, and I'll try and come to see you work some day, if I can get time. I'm likely to have plenty of it, I'm afraid." She began eagerly, but ended with a despondent droop of the whole figure, that made her new friend forget himself in interest for her. "I'll stop, honor bright. And you come and look after me now and then. That'll keep me steady. See if it don't. But tell me how you are getting on? Little down on your luck just now, I guess? Come, I've told my story, you tell yours, and maybe I can lend a hand. I owe you a good turn, you know; and I'm one that likes to pay his debts, if he can." "You did pay yours; but I never got the letter, for I came away after Aunty died. You see I wasn't her own niece,--only sort of a distant relation; and she took me because my own people were gone. Her son had all she left,--it wasn't much; and she told him to be good to me. But I soon saw that I was a burden, and couldn't bear to stay. So I went away, to take care of myself. I liked it at first; but this winter, times are so hard and work so scarce, I don't get on at all." "What do you do, miss?" asked Whittington, with added respect; because in her shabby dress and altered face he read the story of a struggle Letty was too proud to tell. "I sew," she answered briefly, smoothing out her wet shawl with a hand so thin and small it was pathetic to see, when one remembered that nothing but a needle in those slender fingers kept want and sin at bay. The kindly fellow seemed to feel that; and, as his eye went from his own strong right arm to the sledge-hammer it often swung, the instinct of protection so keen in manly men made him long to stand between poor Letty and the hard world he knew so well. The magnetism of sympathy irresistibly attracted iron to steel, while little needle felt assured that big hammer would be able to beat down many of the obstacles which now seemed insurmountable, if she only dared to ask for aid. But help came without the asking. "Been after work, you say? Why, we could give you heaps of it, if you don't mind it's being coarse and plain. This sort of thing, you know," touching his red shirt with a business-like air. "Our men use 'em altogether, and like 'em strong in the seams. Some ain't, and buttons fly off just looking at 'em. That makes a fellow mad, and swearing comes easy." But Letty shook her head, though she couldn't help smiling at his sober way of explaining the case and its sad consequences. "I've tried that work, and it doesn't pay. Six cents for a shirt, and sometimes only four, isn't enough to earn one's board and clothes and fire, even if one made half a dozen a day. _You_ can't get them for that, and somebody grows rich while _we_ starve.