This morning, as Rose was sweeping the pavement in front of our house, she was accosted by a small boy with ruddy cheeks and a red cap.

“Is he dead?” asked the small boy, his head interrogatively to one side, a half-expectant, half-wistful light in his twinkling blue eyes.

“Dead?” says Rose, with a little skip. “Who?”

“Why, him,” specified the small boy, ungrammatically insistent. “The little chap which used to sit in the winder and watch us play. I haven’t seen him for three days.”

“Of course he ain’t dead,” answered Rose, indignantly, for, with all her faults, she is very fond of Robin. “Ah guess he can stay in bed if he wan’ster without askin’ you! Shoo! get along!” and she swished viciously at the boy with her broom.

“Then give him this,” cried the red-capped one, hopping nimbly to safety in the gutter; and rolled a great golden orange to her feet. “I bought it with my own pennies to eat in school; but I’d rather he had it,—as long as he isn’t dead.” And he walked whistling down the street.

It was Robin’s “chum” John, to be sure,—and how Bobsie did enjoy that orange!

“It isn’t everybody who has such good friends as me,” he remarked with gusto, between unctuous sucks. “There’s Mrs. Burroughs, who sends over chairs an’ things just when you least expect it; and Francis, who wants me to have ’em (she said I might count him); an’ Georgie, even if we do fight sometimes; an’ my chum John. It’s pleasant to have people love you, isn’t it, Ellie dear?—and very comforting, too.”

In one instance, certainly, the comfort seems to be mutual. Mrs. Burroughs has run in to see Robin several times this last week. They laugh and chatter away together in the jolliest fashion. Indeed, it is quite delightful to hear them; for Bobs has not a particle of shyness with his new friend, while she seems to find an almost painful pleasure in his society. The more we see her, the sweeter we think her; and there was not a dissenting voice when Ernie declared this evening that “Mrs. Burroughs is next door to an angel.”