erhead. A sickening
odor came from the mud of the gutters and the horses and people, and as
if a wave of repulsion had struck against every sense in her, the girl
turned and fled from the sight and sound and smell of it all into the
ladies' waiting-room at her right.

She knew about that room from Mrs. Burton, who had said she could go in
there, and fix her hair if it had got tumbled, when she came off the
train. But it had been so easy to keep everything just right in the
nice dressing-room on the sleeper that she had expected to step out of
the station and take a Fourth Avenue car without going into the
ladies-room. She found herself the only person in it, except a
comfortable, friendly-looking, middle-aged woman, who seemed to be in
charge of the place, and was going about with a dust-cloth in her hand.
She had such a home-like air, and it was so peaceful there, after all
that uproar outside, that Cornelia could hardly keep back the tears,
though she knew it was silly, and kept saying so to herself under her
breath.

She put her hand-bag down, and went and stood at one of the windows,
trying to make up her mind to venture out; and then she began to move
back and forth from one window to the other. It must have been this
effect of restlessness and anxiety that made the janitress speak to her
at last: "Expecting friends to meet you?"

Cornelia turned round and took a good look at the janitress. She
decided from her official as well as her personal appearance that she
might be trusted, as least provisionally. It had been going through her
mind there at the windows what a fool she was to refuse to let Mr.
Ludlow come to meet her with that friend of his, and she had been
helplessly feigning that she had not refused, and that he was really
coming, but was a little late. She was in the act of accepting his
apology for the delay when the janitress spoke to her, and she said: "I
don't know whether I'd better wait any longer. I was looking for a
Fourth Avenue car."

"Well, you couldn't hardly miss one," said the janitress. "They're
going all the time. Stranger in the city?"

"Yes, I am," Cornelia admitted; she thought she had better admit it.

"Well," said the janitress, "if I was you I'd wait for my friends a
while longer. It's after dark, now, and if they come here and find you
gone, they'll be uneasy, won't they?"

"Well," said Cornelia, and she sank submissively into a seat.

The janitress sat down too. "Not but