"
Mrs. Gibbons waved her hand weakly at her son, who, smiling at us,
had gone to a corner cupboard with perforated tins of diamond pattern
in its doors, and taken therefrom a soup-plate and cup and saucer.
Paying no attention to his mother's reference to a delayed meal, he
ladled out of the big saucepan, with a cracked cup, a plate of the
steaming soup, and carried it carefully to an oilcloth-covered table,
on which was a lamp and glass pitcher, some unwashed dishes left from
the last meal, a broken doll, and a child's shoe. Putting down the
plate of soup, he came back to the stove and poured out a cup of
feeble-looking coffee.
"Goin' to be extras out to-night and I mightn't get back till after
ten." Again his gay little smile lighted his thin face. "Ifen I
don't eat now I mightn't eat at all. Have one?"
He poked a plate of the health-destroying biscuits at Bettina with a
merry little movement, and bravely she took one, bravely made effort
to eat it. "What's your name?" I heard him ask her, and then I
turned to Mrs. Gibbons.
"It is about your little boy I've come to see you.
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