keep? Get out an’ live in the streets yer like ter play in so well!” With a final exclamation she strode back into the room and slammed the door after her. Ophelia picked herself up from the step, shaking her one useful fist at the closed door at the head of the stairs.

Gladys was inexpressibly shocked at this heartless treatment of an injured child. “Come—come home with me,” she said faintly. Seated beside her in the big car, Ophelia ran out her tongue and made faces at the jeering children who watched her ride away.

“This is the life!” she exclaimed, as she settled herself comfortably in the cushioned seat. People in the streets turned to stare at the dirty little ragamuffin riding beside the daintily gowned young girl, shouting saucily at the passers-by, or making jeering remarks in a voice audible above the noise of traffic.

The girls were all out in front watching for her as Gladys drove up. It was past supper time and they were wondering what had become of her. What a chorus of surprised exclamations arose when Ophelia was set down in their midst! Gladys explained the situation briefly and asked Migwan if they could not keep her there awhile. Migwan consented hospitably and went off to find a place for her to sleep, while Gladys proceeded to wash the accumulated layers of dirt from Ophelia’s face and divest her of her spotted rags. She came to the table in a kimono of Gladys’s, for there were no clothes in the house that would fit her. She was nine years old, she said, but small and thin for her age, with arms and legs like pipe-stems which fairly made one shiver to look at. She had a little, pinched, sharp featured face, cunning with the knowledge of the world gained from her life on the streets, big grey-green eyes filled with dancing lights, and black hair that tumbled around her face in tangled curls, which Gladys was not able to smooth out in her hasty going over before supper.

Not in the least shy in her new surroundings, nor complaining of discomfort from the broken arm, she sat at the table and kept up a cheerful stream of talk, racy with slang and the idiom of the streets. Hinpoha was instantly dubbed “Firetop.” “Is it red inside of yer head?” she asked, after gazing steadfastly at Hinpoha’s hair for several minutes. To all questions about her father and mother she shrugged her shoulders. “Ain’t never had any,” she replied. “I was born in the Orphan Asylum. Old Grady got me there.” Here a spasm of rage distorted her face at the remembrance of Old Grady’s ministrations, followed by a wicked chuckle when she thought how that tender guardian’s plan for turning her out homeless into the street had been frustrated by this lucky stroke of fate. What her last name was she did not know. “I guess I never had one,” she said cheerfully. “I’m just Ophelia.” Gladys was much distressed because she would not drink milk. “No,” she said, shoving it away, “that’s for the babies. Gimme coffee or nothin’.” Disdaining the aid of fork or spoon, she conveyed her food to her mouth with her fingers. “Say,” she said, after staring fixedly at Nyoda in a disconcerting way she had, “are yer teeth false?”

“Certainly not!” said Nyoda indignantly. “What made you think so?”

“They’re so white and even,” said Ophelia. “Nobody ever had such teeth of their own.”

“Did you bleach yer hair?” she asked next, turning her attention to Gladys’s pale gold locks. Gladys merely laughed.

Ophelia waxed more loquacious as she filled up on the good things on the table. “Did yer husband leave yer?” she inquired sociably of Mrs. Gardiner. Gladys rose hastily and bore Ophelia away to her room, where a cot had been set up for her.

“Three flies in the spider’s parlor,” said Migwan.

“And one in the ointment, or my prophetic soul has its signals crossed,” said Nyoda.

CHAPTER IV.—THE MEDICINE LODGE.

Nyoda’s prophetic soul proved to be a true prophet, and there were trying times to follow the establishment of Ophelia at Onoway House. That very first night Nyoda woke with a strangling sensation to find Ophelia sitting on her chest. “I want ter sleep in the bed wid yer,” she said, in answer to Nyoda’s startled inquiry. “I’m afraid ter sleep alone.” She had been trying to creep in between Nyoda and Gladys and lost her balance, which accounted for her position when Nyoda woke up.

“But there’s nothing in the room to hurt you,” Nyoda said, reassuringly.

“It’s them hop-toads,” she wailed, stopping her ears against the pillow, “they give me th’ pip with their everlastin’ screechin’. They sound right under the bed.” Gladys woke up in time to hear her and offered to take the cot herself and let Ophelia sleep with Nyoda.

The next morning Gladys made a hurried trip to town to buy Ophelia some clothes, while Nyoda washed her hair, much to Ophelia’s disgust. The curls were so matted that it was impossible to comb them out and there was nothing left to do but cut them short. When all the foreign coloring matter had been removed and the hair had begun to dry in the warm wind, Nyoda stopped beside her in bewildered astonishment. On the top of her head, just about in the center, there was a circular patch of light hair about three inches in diameter. All the rest was black. “Ophelia,” said Nyoda, looking her straight in the eyes, “how did you bleach the top of your hair?”

“It’s a fib,” said Ophelia, politely, “I never bleached it.”

“Then somebody did,” said Nyoda.

“Didn’t neither,” contradicted Ophelia.

“We’ll see whether they did or not,” said Nyoda, “when the hair grows out from the roots.”

Dressed in the pretty clothes Gladys bought for her she was not at all a bad looking child, but her language and her knowledge of evil absolutely appalled the dwellers at Onoway House. “Did yer old man beat yer up?” she asked sympathetically of Mrs. Landsdowne, when that gentle lady came to call. Mrs. Landsdowne had run into the barn door the day before and had a bruise on her forehead.

Ophelia’s sins in the garden were too numerous to chronicle. When set to weeding she pulled weeds and plants impartially, working such havoc in a short time that she was forbidden to touch a single growing thing. Her ignorance of everything pertaining to the country was only equalled by her curiosity.

“What would happen to the cow if you didn’t milk her?” she demanded of Farmer Landsdowne, as she watched him milking one day. “She’d bust, I suppose,” she went on, answering her own question while Farmer Landsdowne was scratching his head for a reply. “Say, are yer whiskers fireproof?” she asked, scrutinizing his white beard with interest. “Because if they ain’t yer don’t dast smoke that pipe. The Santa Claus in Lefkovitz’s window told me so. Say, what do you do when they get dirty?”

Leaving her alone in the barn for a few moments he heard a mighty squawking and cackling and hastened to investigate. He found the old setting hen running distractedly around one of the empty horse stalls, frantically trying to get out, while Ophelia was holding the big rooster on the nest with her one hand, in spite of the fact that he was flapping his wings and pecking at her furiously. “He ought to do some of the settin’,” she remarked, when taken to task for her act, “he ain’t doin’ nothin’ fer a livin’.”

The squash bugs had descended once more, and were making hay of the squash bed while the sun shone, and the girls worked a whole, long weary afternoon clearing the vines. As the bugs were