"Yes," groaned Helen dismally, "a generous but misguided benefactress! Forty-three caps precisely alike save as to size! What scenes of carnage we shall witness when we distribute them three times a day!" "We must remedy that by sewing labels into the crowns, each marked with the child's name in indelible ink." "Exactly,--what a charming task! I shall have to write my cherubs' names, I suppose,--most of them will take a yard of tape apiece. I already recall Paulina Strozynski, Mercedes McGafferty, and Sigismund Braunschweiger." "And I, Maria Virginia de Rejas Perkins, Halfdan Christiansen, and Americo Vespucci Garibaldi." "This is our greatest misfortune since the donation of the thirty-seven little red plaid shawls. Well, good-night. By the way, what's his name?" "Patsy Dennis. I shall take him. I'll tell you more on Monday. Please step into Gilbert's and buy a comfortable little cane-seated armchair, larger than these, and ask one of your good Samaritans to make a soft cushion for it. We'll give him the table that we had made for Johnny Cass. Poor Johnny! I am sorry he has a successor so soon." In five minutes I was taking my homeward walk, mind and heart full of my elfish visitor, with his strange and ancient thoughts, his sharp speeches and queer fancies. Would he ever come back, or would one of those terrible spasms end his life before I was permitted to help and ease his crooked body, or pour a bit of mother-love into his starved little heart? [Illustration: MISS HELEN.] CHAPTER IV. BEHIND THE SCENES. Some children are like little human scrawl-books, blotted all over with the sins and mistakes of their ancestors. Monday morning came as mornings do come, bringing to the overworked body and mind a certain languor difficult to shake off. As I walked down the dirty little street, with its rows of old-clothes shops, saloons, and second-hand-furniture stores, I called several of my laggards, and gave them a friendly warning. "Quarter of nine, Mrs. Finnigan!" "Bless me soul, darlin'! Well, I will hurry up my childern, that I will; but the baby was that bad with whoopin'-cough last night that I never got three winks meself, darlin'!"