"Well, I'd do it in a minute for nothing else beside, but that ain't quite all I was thinking of just this once. Miss Catherine"--she hesitated, then, enthusiastically--"have you seen 'em up-stairs? the whole hundred of 'em laid out off Mrs. Darling's bedroom? I saw 'em when Mrs. Bonnet she sent me up for the lamps to clean. Law! Wouldn't any child like to see a sight like that! There's a little girl in my tenement, she'd just go crazy. Do you think there'd be any harm in it if I was to bring her over and let her get one peep? She's as clean a child as ever you saw. She comes of dreadful poor folks, but just as respectable! She never seen anything like it in her life. Law, what would I have done when I was a young one if I'd seen that? I'd thought I was dead and gone to heaven. I say, Miss Catherine, d' you think any one would mind?" "How'll they know?" said Miss Catherine, callously. "Look here, Sally; you go along just as fast as you can and fetch your young one. And when you've got back, perhaps I'll step out a minute, two or three doors up street, and you can answer the bell while I'm gone. Now hurry into your things. I'll give you your car fare." "Miss Catherine, you're just as good as you can be, and I'll do something to oblige you, too, some time," said Sally, her face aglow with delight; and having hurried into her jacket and tied up her head in a worsted muffler, was off. She almost ran over the packed snow down the street. She had soon left the quiet rows of private dwelling-houses and come where hundreds of lights glittered across the rose-tinged snow. At every few rods a street band tootled and blared, covering the scraping of snow-shovels and jingle of bells. "How gay it is!" she thought; "won't it be a treat!" She plunged into a mean, small street, leading off a mean but tawdry larger one, where things hung outside the shops with their prices, written large, pinned on them, and had soon come to the house where her family lived. She went in like a great gust of fresh air. In less than five minutes she came out, leading by the hand a little girl who, from being very much bundled up about the shoulders, and having brief petticoats above thin black legs, looked top-heavy. She was obliged to nearly run to keep up with Sally, and was trying to get out words through the breathlessness occasioned by hurrying and laughing and coming so suddenly into the frosty air. "Oh, lemme guess, Sal, and tell me when I'm hot. Is it made of sugar?" "No, it ain't." "But you said it was a treat, didn't you, Sally?" "I did that. But ain't there all sorts of treats? There's going to the circus, for instance. That hasn't any sugar." "Is it a circus, Sally? Is it a circus?" "No, it ain't a circus, but it's every bit as nice."