"Am I hurt badly, Mammy?"

"I fear it, lass."

"I'm _glad_ of it; I ought to be worse than Jack, and I hope I am. I'll
bear it well, and be good right away. Sing, Mammy, and I'll try to
go to sleep to please you."

Jill shut her eyes with sudden and unusual meekness, and before
her mother had crooned half a dozen verses of an old ballad, the
little black head lay still upon the pillow, and repentant Jill was
fast asleep with a red mitten in her hand.

Mrs. Pecq was an Englishwoman who had left Montreal at the
death of her husband, a French Canadian, and had come to live in
the tiny cottage which stood near Mrs. Minot's big house,
separated only by an arbor-vitae hedge. A sad, silent person, who
had seen better days, but said nothing about them, and earned her
bread by sewing, nursing, work in the factory, or anything that
came in her way, being anxious to educate her little girl. Now, as
she sat beside the bed in the small, poor room, that hope almost
died within her, for here was the child laid up for months,
probably, and the one ambition and pleasure of the solitary
woman's life was to see Janey Pecq's name over all the high marks
in the school-reports she proudly brought home.

"She'll win through, please Heaven, and I'll see my lass a
gentlewoman yet, thanks to the good friend in yonder, who will
never let her want for care," thought the poor soul, looking out into