It was decided to move the family into one of the model tenements and furnish a room for the girl and her sister, paying the difference in rent for one year, to see what the result would be in health and morals in that family. When the proposition was made one evening to Molly, her face lighted and she emitted a sigh of perfect consent. But the light died out, and an expression of almost self-pity supplanted it. "No, I must not let you do it. It would be lovely to have a room for Katie and me alone. I must not let you do it." She was silent for some minutes; then, with eyes cast down, she said in a quiet voice that indicated that persuasion was useless: "I know them houses. They're awful nice. I'd like to live in them. They're awful particular. They won't let no noisy people in. They make them move right out." Then slowly, with burning cheeks, she said in barely distinct tones: "Mamma is noisy sometimes, and when she's noisy she gets into fights with people. There ain't no use of moving in there; they'd not let us stay. Then, Billy"--the stepfather--"and I fight. I never speaks to him, excepts when he speaks ugly to Katie or mamma. He's drunk a lot now, most all the time, and then he's ugly to them. He ain't to me, 'cos he knows I'd break his head; but he is to them, and then I has to shut him up. I ain't spoke to him since he struck mamma, just after they was married." "But your wages give him a home and food." "Yes, I know it, but I can't help that, 'cos he's married to mamma and must be where she is." There was silence again, and then the girl continued: "Mamma didn't do it so much till she married him; she's worse now. I wish I was dead;" and the head of many shades was buried with the limp, "frowzled" feathers in the sofa cushion. "No, I can earn enough to keep them where they are. I must not move; but it would be lovely," she added with a sob. A couple of weeks later she came in the evening. It was raining hard. After a moment's silence, she announced, with shining face: "We have the loveliest baby at our house, born last night week. I wanted to tell you before, but I had to do the work night and morning. He's lovely." She fussed at her pocket and brought out a pair of baby shoes of worsted. "I got them with some money I earned overtime. You say I ought to get what I want with that money." The eyes of the hostess followed the lines of Molly's dress to her feet. Her swollen, purple foot was seen through the broken upper of her shoe. Molly was looking with pride and love at the tiny shoes on her knee. "I named the baby Willie, and I'm his godmother," she added with pride, without the slightest conception of the relation between "Billy" and "Willie." "Billy? Oh, he's drunk; been drunk a week. I ain't let him in yet; I'm goin' to wait until the baby's bigger and mamma's up. She'll let him in," she added, with disgust.