"You don't like it, do you, Tommy? I'm sorry, too. I wanted to stay here. The people who have moved in the big red house by the pond have two of the nicest children. They are cousins and have the prettiest names--Rosalie Meywood and Rosslyn Fennimore--and they are almost my age. I hated to tell them my name, but they didn't laugh a bit, Tom. They didn't even _look_ queer at each other, and Rosslyn said they had a kitten they called Tabby and it was the smartest cat they ever saw. They have taught it tricks and Rosalie invited me over to see it. I met them down in the blackberry patch. They were picking just for fun and they helped me a little--not much, 'cause they were so slow. Neither of them knows how to pick berries and they took only those out in sight, while the very best ones are most always way in under the vines. We are all in the same classes in school and we planned such nice times together when lessons begin again. I never get to knowing any nice people but we move away. Do you s'pose we will ever have any friends, Tom?" Tom's thoughts were very busy, and he only half heard the child's lively chatter. In the dim long ago, when he was only six years old, one morning a white-aproned woman with a gentle face had called him to her and led him into a room where lay his own dear mother with a little white bundle on her arm, and when the covers were turned down he had looked into a tiny, red, wrinkled face with blinking, black eyes and was told that this was a baby sister come to be a playmate for him. Then the nurse went away and left them for a little while and his mother talked to him in her soft voice that he could remember best in the little lullaby she used to sing to him: "I'm tired now, and sleepy, too, Come put me in my little bed." She had laid the baby's little fisting hands into his and told him that he must always take good care of little sister. He never saw the mother again, but after days of hushed voices and light steps in the big house, Aunt Maria had come to take care of them, and they moved away to another town.