DEB. 199

shining green ; and as for the crack of a river, sometimes that
was white too, and sometimes it was green or purple or gray
or blue; and sometimes it tossed about, and sometimes it was
as still as Deb herself. That was all she knew about the
river. And so she wondered.

But most of all she wondered about the bells. The town
was full of bells. There were bells in the streets, and bells,
she had heard, to the mills, and bells, she thought, to the
river too; but all the bells that she knew about belonged to
the grocer and the baker, and these she had never done very
much more than wonder at, after all, for they were two
stories down in the yard, and she was in her high chair by
the window.

Now this, you see, was why Deb wondered. She never got
out of that high chair by the window, except to get into her
bed. And she never had been anywhere in all her life except
into that chair and into bed. And she was fifteen years
old. :
The bed and the chair and the window were all that Deb
had, except a mother, and she did n’t amount to much, for
she was busy and worried and hurried and sick and anxious
and poor, — very poor, and the room was full of children who
could run out to see the bells and knew all about the river,
and who never wondered ; so, when she had put Deb out of
her bed into her chair, or out of her chair into her bed, she
thought no more about her; so, as I say, she did n’t amount

to much.