cried Jessie. “Lottie darling, I’ll give you a penny!”

“I don’t want your penny,” sobbed Lottie; and she looked down at the fat knee, and, seeing a drop of blood on it, burst forth again.

Sara flew across the room and, kneeling down, put her arms round her.

“Now, Lottie,” she said. “Now, Lottie, you PROMISED Sara.”

“She said I was a cry-baby,” wept Lottie.

Sara patted her, but spoke in the steady voice Lottie knew.

“But if you cry, you will be one, Lottie pet. You PROMISED.” Lottle remembered


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and did not want the things that were best for her, her shrill little voice was usually to be heard uplifted in wails in one part of the house or another.

Her strongest weapon was that in some mysterious way she had found out that a very small girl who had lost her mother was a person who ought to


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