Page:Saxe Holm's Stories, Series Two.djvu/319

Rh an old maid—a pretty old one, too. Still, some of the phrases did sound simple enough for a child. Joe wants to buy the stockings and carry them home with him. He says he sets a store by them, because this little thing knit them."

"Give them to him," said Sarah. "They are n't any use here; nobody else will wear them."

"I don't know that I 've any right to give them away, without putting another pair in their place," replied Netty. "I think I 'll let him give me a gray pair for them. He seems to have money of his own; I think I 'll let him buy them."

So a few days later, Joe set out for home with the red stockings tucked snugly in a corner of his valise, and a good new pair of gray ones in their place on Netty's stocking shelf.

"Dear old fellow," said Netty to Sarah, after he had bade them good-by; "we have never had his like in this hospital, and I don't believe we ever shall."

"His like is n't very often found," replied Sarah, quietly. "I consider Joe Hale a remarkable man. If he had had education, he would have been a real force in the world, somewhere; he is, as it is, by the sheer weight of his superb physique and overflowing good-heartedness; but I 'd have liked to see what breeding and education could have done for him."

"Hurt the physique, very likely, and cooled the good-heartedness," replied Netty. "That 's the