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it … at least, in Jane’s recollection … and so to the fence that had ceased to be iron and become a wooden paling between 60 and 58. There was a gap in it behind the dog-house where a slat had been broken off amid a tangle of creeper and Jane, squeezing through it, found herself in the untidy yard of 58. It was still quite light and Jane could see a girl huddled at the root of the cherry-tree, sobbing bitterly, her face in her hands.
    “Can I help you?” said Jane.
    Though Jane herself had no inkling of it, those words were the keynote of her character. Any one else would probably have said, “What is the matter?” But Jane always wanted to help: and, though she was too young to realize it, the tragedy of her little existence was that nobody ever wanted her help … not even mother, who had everything heart could wish.
    The child under the cherry-tree stopped sobbing and got on her feet. She looked at Jane and Jane looked at her and something happened to both of them. Long afterwards Jane said, “I knew we were the same kind of folks.” Jane saw a girl of about her own age, with a very white little face under a thick bang of black hair cut straight across her forehead. The hair looked as if it had not been washed for a long time but the eyes underneath it were brown and beautiful, though of quite a different brown from Jane’s. Jane’s were goldy-brown like a marigold, with laughter lurking in them, but this girl’s were very dark and very sad … so sad that Jane’s heart did something queer inside of her. She knew quite well that it wasn’t right that anybody so young should have such sad eyes.
    The girl wore a dreadful old blue dress that had certainly never been made for her. It was too long and too elaborate and it was dirty and grease-spotted. It hung on the thin little shoulders like a gaudy rag on a scarecrow. But the dress mattered nothing to Jane. All she was conscious of was those appealing eyes.
    “Can I help?” she asked again.
    The girl shook her head and the tears welled up in her big eyes.
    “Look,” she pointed.
    Jane looked and saw between the cherry-tree and the fence what seemed like a rudely made flower-bed strewn over with roses that were ground into the earth.
    “Dick did that,” said the girl. “He did it on purpose … because it was my garden. Miss Summers had them roses sent her last week … twelve great big red ones for her birthday … and this morning she said they were done and told me to throw them in the garbage pail. But I couldn’t … they were still so pretty. I come out here and made that bed and stuck the roses all over it. I knew they wouldn’t last long … but they looked pretty and I pretended I had a garden of my own … and now … Dick just come out and stomped all over it … and LAUGHED.”
    She sobbed again. Jane didn’t know who Dick was but at that moment she could cheerfully have wrung his neck with her strong, capable little hands. She put her arm about the girl.
    “Never mind. Don’t cry any more. See, we’ll break off a lot of little cherry boughs and stick them all over your bed. They’re fresher than the roses … and think how lovely they’ll look in the moonlight.”
    “I’m scared to do that,” said the girl. “Miss West might be mad.”
    Again Jane felt a thrill of understanding. So this girl was afraid of people, too.
    “Well, we’ll just climb up on that big bough that stretches out and sit there and admire it,” said Jane. “I suppose that won’t make Miss West mad, will it?”
    “I guess she won’t mind that. Of course she’s mad at me anyhow to-night because I stumbled with a tray of tumblers when I was waiting on the supper table and broke three of them. She said if I kept on like that … I spilled soup on Miss Thatcher’s silk dress last night … she’d have to send me away.”
    “Where would she send you?”
    “I don’t know. I haven’t anywhere to go. But she says I’m not worth my salt and she’s only