"In the mud and scum of things
Something always always sings!"
"MY, but it's nice an' cold this mornin'! The thermometer's donefell up to zero!"
Mrs. Wiggs made the statement as cheerfully as if her elbows werenot sticking out through the boy's coat that she wore, or her teethchattering in her head like a pair of castanets. But, then, Mrs.Wiggs was a philosopher, and the sum and substance of her philosophylay in keeping the dust off her rose-colored spectacles. When Mr.Wiggs traveled to eternity by the alcohol route, she buried hisfaults with him, and for want of better virtues to extol she alwayslaid stress on the fine hand he wrote. It was the same way whentheir little country home burned and she had to come to the city toseek work; her one comment was: "Thank God, it was the pig instid ofthe baby that was burned!"
So this bleak morning in December she pinned the bed-clothes aroundthe children and made them sit up close to the stove, while shepasted brown paper over the broken window-pane and made sprightlycomments on the change in the weather.
The Wiggses lived in the Cabbage Patch. It was not a real cabbagepatch, but a queer neighborhood, where ramshackle cottages playedhop-scotch over the railroad tracks. There were no streets, so whena new house was built the owner faced it any way his fancy prompted.Mr. Bagby's grocery, it is true, conformed to convention, andpresented a solid front to the railroad track, but Miss Hazy'scottage shied off sidewise into the Wiggses' yard, as if it wereafraid of the big freight-trains that went thundering past so manytimes a day; and Mrs. Schultz's front room looked directly into theEichorns' kitchen. The latter was not a bad arrangement, however,for Mrs. Schultz had been confined to her bed for ten years, and hersole interest in life consisted in watching what took place in herneighbo