her secret in
a twinkle. But Mrs. Meeker was too thankful to be curious.

"Certainly, Miss--Miss----"

"Miss Mary," said the other, yawning, and the landlady repeated, "Yes,
Miss Merry. Can't I help you, you being so tired and all?"

"And she stuck out her feet for her shoes, just like a baby," she
confided to Georgie, later. "She went off before I got her undressed,
really; her folks ought to 've sent some one with her, worn out as she
was! You go 'round the first thing in the morning and tell the agent
I've got a fine boarder, and more expected. I feel real encouraged."

And all that night and all the next day Miss Mary slept dreamlessly,
for the first time in years without a drug to help her.

It did not seem unusual that Mrs. Meeker should have unpacked her few
things and laid them in the drawer of the battered bureau: some one
always unpacked her things. And when, strangely weak and relaxed, she
lay for three days more and ate dutifully from the tray, dozing between
whiles, nobody questioned her.

On the fourth day she woke into a grey, despondent world again. The
old angry, purposeless tears beset her and she felt that terrible
dumbness settling over her. She had long ceased to fight it, now; she
only wondered what Mrs. Meeker would do with her. But she never knew
what Mrs. Meeker would have done, for when the tired, drudging little
woman brought her breakfast tray she held it in dingily gloved hands;
she was dressed for a journey.

"My brother's down with a stroke," she said abruptly, "Georgie's
father, and wants to see me. I'll have to nurse him, prob'ly, and I
s'pose his sending means he's friendly again. It may just be I won't
need to come back, and I'm glad, of course, for I'm worth my keep to
him any day, and he'd ought to have took Georgie long ago. I'll soon
know, and I'll write you, and what I wanted to ask was, would you be
willin' to wait till I find out? It might be only temp'ry, and then
I'd be sorry to lose a boarder. Will you stay till you hear, anyway?"

Miss Mary nodded dumbly. She could not speak and she was ashamed that
she could not; _she had never been ashamed before_.

"That's good," said Mrs. Meeker quickly, "and the lady next door'll
give you meals. I'll settle with her--Mrs. Palmer. Her board's good,
and I'll only charge you five for the room. That makes a month you've
paid for. D'you see?"

Again, Miss Mary nodded.

"Then I'll get right off. It's Philadel