"Her mother is a wicked woman, Ma, and don't make her happy, nor teach her to be good. If Madge has lost her, and you let her live with us and be a mother to her, she will be a good deal better off, and much happier than she could be with her own mother."
"Spoken like a philosopher!" exclaimed Uncle Morris. "The loss of a drunken mother is not, indeed, a thing to mourn over, especially if that loss brings with it the gain of a home in which Love is the perpetual President--but I suspect from your pa's looks that Madge's mother is not wholly lost, yet."
"_Why!_ didn't pa say he couldn't find her?" said Jessie, looking with a puzzled air at her father.
"Not exactly, my dear," replied Mr. Carlton. "I said I had not _seen_ her, which is true; but I have _heard_ of her, as I suppose; for a strange woman did go to the tavern about the time Madge was left, and is now in jail as a drunken vagrant."
Mr. Carlton now told all he had heard about the supposed Mrs. Clifton, and it was agreed that Uncle Morris should see her in the morning and learn if she was, indeed, the poor child's mother.
After tea, Jessie hurried to the kitchen to look after her _protégé_. She found her so changed by her washing and new dress, that notwithstanding her high expectations, she could hardly believe her to be the same Madge she had seen sitting there an hour before. But Madge it was, as bright and good-looking a girl as could be found anywhere, in or out of Duncanville.
"Have you had enough to eat, Madge?" inquired Jessie, scarcely knowing how to act the part of an agreeable hostess.
"Indade, miss, but she has eaten more like a hungry pig than a gal," said Mary, before Madge had time to reply.
Jessie could not keep from laughing at Mary's not very complimentary comparison. Hence, she turned her head so as not to hurt the little girl's feelings. As soon as she could make her face straight and sober again, she sat down beside Madge, and taking her hand, said--
But Madge had other and higher thoughts than of dolls or playthings. She was in a sort of wonder-world. She could not satisfy herself with regard to the meaning of the change brought about in her during the last hour or two. That pleasant kitchen, the neat dress she wore, the bath by which she had been cleansed from the filth of poverty, the pleasant faces she had seen, and the kind voices she had heard, all seemed to her like a gay dream, and she was expecting, ay, and fearing too, that the next minute she should awake and find herself sitting and shivering in the cold wind, under the stone wall, waiting for her ungentle mother. But when Jessie touched her hand and spoke so kindly to her, every thing seemed real, and her heart sent up gushes of gratitude to the little friend who, like some good fairy, had conjured away her rags, and pain, and cold, and hunger. After gazing silently into Jessie's eyes a few moments, as if she was trying to look into her soul, she said--