Winter had begun to withdraw his ghostly troops, and Glamerton began to grow warmer.

Not half so many cold feet dangled from the cold legs of little children in the torturing churches; not half so many coughs tore the chests of the poor old men and women as they stooped over their little fires, with the blasts from door and window-sill in their ankles and the backs of their necks.

Annie, who had been very happy all the time, began to be aware of something more at hand.

A flutter scarcely recognizable, as of the wings of awaking delight, would stir her little heart with a sensation of physical presence and motion; she would find herself giving an involuntary skip as she walked along, and now and then humming a bit of a psalm tune.

A hidden well was throbbing in the child's bosom.