"Well, I know we've had things stolen by just such children, and papa
says it's best to keep such people down; for they're sure to impose on
those who are kind to them, and charity is quite thrown away upon
them."

"A convenient belief to save trouble," Lucy was just going to say, but
wisely repressed the impulse, feeling that it would not sound very
respectful to Stella's father, who, she felt, must be a very different
man from her own.

"Stella," said Alick, "did it ever occur to you what you might have
been if you had been left, motherless and almost fatherless, to run
all day on the streets, listening to bad words and seeing all sorts of
evil, without any one to say a kind word to you and teach you what is
right? I wish you could have heard the poor little thing's story as
she told it to me." And in a few words he gave them an outline of
Nelly's history.

"Papa says you never can believe their stories," objected the
city-hardened Stella.

"I know you can't always," replied Alick; "but I think I'm not easily
taken in, and I'm willing to stake my judgment on this being no sham.
And how would _you_ have turned out from such a bringing-up,
Mademoiselle Stella?"

"And where is her father?" Lucy asked.

"Oh, her father works on a boat, and is seldom at home. They came to