Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch

								

porch. But the roof gave the house its chief distinction; it was the
only tin roof in the Cabbage Patch. Jim and Billy had made it of old
cans which they picked up on the commons.
Jim was fifteen and head of the family; his shoulders were those of
a man, and were bent with work, but his body dwindled away to a pair
of thin legs that seemed incapable of supporting the burden imposed
upon them. In his anxious eyes was the look of a bread-winner who
had begun the struggle too soon. Life had been a tragedy to Jim: the
tragedy that comes when a child's sensitive soul is forced to meet
the responsibilities of manhood, yet lacks the wisdom that only
experience can bring.
Billy Wiggs was differently constituted; responsibilities rested
upon him as lightly as the freckles on his nose. When occasion or
his mother demanded he worked to good purposes with a tenacity that
argued well for his future success, but for the most part he played
and fought and got into trouble with the aptitude characteristic of
the average small boy.
It was Mrs. Wiggs's boast that her three little girls had geography
names; first came Asia, then Australia. When the last baby arrived,
Billy had stood looking down at the small bundle and asked
anxiously: "Are you goin' to have it fer a boy or a girl, ma?" Mrs.
Wiggs had answered: "A girl, Billy, an' her name's Europena!"
On this particular Sunday morning Mrs. Wiggs bustled about the
kitchen in unusual haste.
"I am goin' to make you all some nice Irish pertater soup fer
dinner," she said, as she came in from the parlor, where she kept
her potatoes and onions. "The boys'll be in soon, an' we'll have
to hurry and git through 'fore the childern begin to come to
Sunday-school."
For many years Sunday afternoon had been a trying time in the
neighborhood, so Mrs. Wiggs had organized a Sunday-school class at
which she presided.
"If there don't come Chris an' Pete a'ready!" said Asia, from her
post by the stove; "I bet they've had their dinner, an' jes' come
early to git some of ours!"
"Why, Asia!" exclaimed Mrs. Wiggs, "that ain't hospit'le, an' Chris
with one leg, too! 'T ain't no trouble at all. All I got to do is to
put a little more water in the soup, an' me and Jim won't take but
one piece of bread."
When Jim and Billy came in they found their places at the table
taken, so they sat on the floor and drank their soup out of
tea-cups.
"Gee!" said Billy, after the third help, "I've drinken so much that
when I swallers a piece er bread I can hear it splash!"
"Well, you boys git up now, an' go out and bring me in a couple of
planks to put acrost the cheers fer the childern to set on."
By two o 'clock the Sunday-school had begun; every seat in the
kitchen, available and otherwise, was occupied. The boys sat in the
windows and on the table, and the girls squeezed together on the
improvised benches. Mrs. Wiggs stood before them with a dilapidated