"Say, didn't you never have to tie up your hair with a shoe-string ?" Ellen shook her head, looking at her wonderingly.

Then with a sudden impulse she tore off the blue ribbon from her curls.

"Say, you take it," she said, "my mother won't care.

I'd just as lief wear the shoe-string, honest." "I don't want your blue ribbon," Abby returned, stoutly; "a shoe-string is a good deal better to tie the hair with.

I don't want your blue ribbon; I don't want no blue ribbon unless it's mine." "It would be yours if I give it to you," Ellen declared, with blue eyes of astonishment and consternation upon this very strange little girl.
"No, it wouldn't," maintained Abby Atkins.
But it ended in the two girls, with that wonderful and inexplicable adjustment of childhood into one groove after harsh grating on different levels, walking off together with arms around each other's waist, and after school began Ellen often felt a soft, cat-like pat on her head, and turned round with a loving glance at Abby Atkins.
Ellen talked more about Abby Atkins than any other of the children when she got home, and while her mother looked at it all easily, her grandmother was doubtful.