"I want my mamma to come back," moaned the child. "I don't want her to stay in heaven."
"But you must n't cry, Freddie; an', some day, you kin go an' see mamma."
The child's curiosity got the better of his grief. He asked, "Is heaven far, Mis' Davis?"
"Yes, dear, awful far," she answered. But she was wrong. Heaven is not far from the warm heart and tender hands of a good woman.
The child's head drooped, and he drowsed in her arms.
"Put him to bed, Melissy,—pore little fellow," said her husband in husky tones. He had been listening and watching them around the edge of his paper. The child slept on, while the woman undressed him and laid him in the bed.
On the morrow the women dropped in one by one, until a half-dozen or more were there, to plan the boy's future. They were all poor, and most of them had families of their own. But all hoped that there might be some plan devised whereby Margaret's boy might find a refuge without going to the orphans asylum, an institution which is the
