"I shall help you shovel the snow off, uncle Thomas, in front of the house," declared Bamford. "So will I," cried George Edward, coming out of a yawn; "oh dear, I feel full of candy to my ears. I'd like a good pinch of salt." "I'm al_most_ sick of caramels," acknowledged Effie, daintily laying one by one in her bon-bon box to pick out a plain lemon drop. "Wouldn't it be dreadful to have to eat them always?" George Edward made a wry face. Then he twisted his mouth up into a funny little pucker. "Let's make a candy bag and drop it at Tim Ryan's door to-morrow," he cried. Tim Ryan was the man who took care of uncle Thomas' furnace, and swept out his store. He lived two blocks off in a dingy tenement house. Effie closed her fingers involuntarily on her caramel with old-time fondness. "Candy isn't good for poor folks," said Bamford sententiously, and cramming his mouth full of taffy. "They get so little, it surprises their digestive apparatus," said uncle Thomas dryly. "I don't believe our contributions however in that line will harm them." Hortense turned a stiff little back upon her precious candy pile, most of it saved with provident forethought to eat in the following days when amusements would run low. Could she? She swallowed very hard an obstacle in her throat, said _no_ in big letters to her own small mind, then ran over to George Edward, both hands full of sweets, and said in an odd little way all her own: "There, that's to make the poor people sick." A shout greeted her; but her mother kissed her, and Hortense was satisfied. The baby of the group must not shame them all. So it was quite a respectable pile that at last lay in a good-sized paper bag tied with a flaming red ribbon, all ready for the expedition to Tim Ryan's after breakfast the next morning. The candy did not injure the Ryans big and little, we will only say, but they came out of the feast with blooming sticky faces, and hearts full of gratitude toward the "Allen childer." And then in two days they were all, that merry company, back once more in their homes, happy in the memory of the good time they had had, and full of pluck and enthusiasm for school and home life. It was about this time that Jared Lewis, a rather dull boy in No. 9, the room that held George Edward in school-hours, broke out one day in the reading class with a new idea before them all. Jared was of a somewhat dull turn of mind, I have said. Certainly not a brilliant boy. But he held to a thought with wonderful pertinacity that once got into his mind; nothing could shake it.