The Widow O'Callaghan's Boys

every one carried something, even the children, who stumbled by reason of their very importance.

The widow looked out and saw the full hands, and her heart sank. Was she to be provided for by charity? She looked with her keen eyes into the crowd of faces, and her heart went up into her throat. It was not charity, but neighborliness and good will she read there.

"I'd be wan of 'em, if somebody else was me, may the Lord bless 'em," she said as she opened wide the door.

In they trooped, and, for a moment, everybody seemed to be talking at once.

[Illustration: "For every one carried something."]

It sometimes needs a great deal of talk to make a kind deed seem like nothing at all. Sometimes even a great deal of talk fails to do so. It failed to-day.

Tears were running unheeded down the widow's face. Not even her boys knew how everything was gone, and she left with no money to buy more. And everybody tried not to see the tears and everybody talked faster than ever. Then the first church bell rang