ittle
trouble, an' mebby you can help me out. You are everybody's friend, just
like your brother, exactly. Only his bein' that way's bound to get him
into trouble sooner or before that. Eh! What's that you're lookin' at?"

Laura had gone to the buffet after the riders had started away. She had
a singular feeling about that cup appearing so suddenly. She remembered
now that Jerry had asked twice about those cups, and had looked at them
with such a peculiar expression on each occasion. Laura had not remarked
upon it to herself the first time, but the trifling incident at the
table just now stayed in her mind. Yet why? The housekeeper often
rearranged the dining-room features in her endeavor to keep things free
from dust. That would not satisfy the query. That cup and Jerry Swaim
were dodging about most singularly in Laura's consciousness, and she
could not know that the reason for it lay in the projecting power of the
mind of the woman coming across lots at that moment to call on her.

Yet when Mrs. Bahrr thrust herself into the dining-room unannounced, as
was her habit, with her insistent greeting, and her query, "What's that
you're lookin' at?" the mistress of "Castle Cluny" had a feeling of
having been caught holding a guilty suspicion; and when Stellar Bahrr
ran her through with steely eyes she felt herself blushing with surprise
and chagrin.

"How can I help you, Mrs. Bahrr?" she asked, recovering herself in a
moment.

It was, however, the loss of the moment that always gave the woman
before her the clue she wanted.

"I'm needin' just a little money--only a few dollars. I'm quittin'
hat-trimmin' since them smarties down-town got so busy makin' over, an'
trimmin' over, an' everything. I'm goin' to makin' bread. I've got six
customers already, an' I'm needin' a gasoliner the worst way. I lack
jist five--mebby I could squeeze out with four dollars if I had it right
away. You never knowed what it means to be hard up, I reckon; never had
no trouble at all; no husband to up an' leave you and not a soul to
lean on. You've always had York to lean on. I 'ain't got nobody."

The drooping figure and wrinkled face were pitiful enough to keep Laura
Macpherson from reminding her that she was older than her brother and
once the leaning had been the other way. Here was a needy, lonely,
friendless woman. What matter that her greatest enemy was herself? All
of us are in that boat.

"Of course I'll help you, Mrs. Bahrr. I'll ge