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194 possibility presented itself to her kind, slow, little mind all at once. She crept off the bed in the dark and found her way to the table where the candle stood. She struck a match and lit the candle. When she had lighted it, she bent forward and looked at Sara, with her new thought growing to definite fear in her eyes.

"Sara," she said in a timid, almost awe-stricken voice, "are—are—you never told me—I don't want to be rude, but—are you ever hungry? "

It was too much just at that moment. The barrier broke down. Sara lifted her face from her hands.

"Yes," she said in a new passionate way. "Yes, I am. I 'm so hungry now that I could almost eat you. And it makes it worse to hear poor Becky. She 's hungrier than I am."

Ermengarde gasped.

"Oh! Oh!" she cried wofully; "and I never knew!"

"I did n't want you to know," Sara said. "It would have made me feel like a street beggar. I know I look like a street beggar."

"No, you don't—you don't!" Ermengarde broke in.

"Your clothes are a little queer,—but you could n't look like a street beggar. You have n't a street-beggar face."

"A little boy once gave me a sixpence for charity," said Sara, with a short little laugh in spite of herself. "Here it is." And she pulled out the thin ribbon from her neck. "He would n't have given me his Christmas sixpence if I had n't looked as if I needed it."

Somehow the sight of the dear little sixpence was good