s though afraid, but there was a pleading look in
her hungry eyes, a gleam of something like hope that drew Elizabeth in.
She stepped down into the chilly little room. The flickering gas jet
shed a pale circle of light around the wretched place. At one glance
every detail of the sordid surroundings seemed to be stamped upon
Elizabeth's brain; the low bed in the corner under the sloping roof,
where the old man lay, covered by a ragged quilt, the rusty fireless
stove, with the water falling drip, drip upon it from the melting snow
on the sagging roof, the old cupboard with its cracked dishes and its
smell of moldy bread. And yet she looked only at her lost school-mate,
at the hungry, frightened eyes and the white thin face. She saw, too,
how the girl shrank from her, fearful and yet hopeful, and a great
flood of pity surged over her. She took both the thin rough hands in
her delicately gloved ones and tried to smile.

"Oh, Eppie!" she cried, "where have you been this long, long time, my
dear?"

The effect of her words alarmed her. Eppie clutched her hands and
burst into a storm of sobs. Frightened and dismayed, and at a loss
what to do, Elizabeth blindly did the very best thing. She put her
arms about the shaking little figure and held it close. She drew her
down to an old box that stood by the damp wall, and the two old
school-mates, so widely separated by fate, clung to each other and
sobbed.

"Oh, Lizzie! oh, Lizzie," the girl kept repeating her friend's name
over and over. "You always promised you'd come and see me, and I
thought you'd forgot me--you being such a grand lady. I thought you'd
forgot me!"

"Eppie," whispered Elizabeth, "don't! oh, don't! I wanted to find
you--long ago--but I didn't know where you were. Hush, dear, don't cry
so, you will make yourself ill. See, you will waken your grandfather."

She stopped at this, choking back her sobs. "It's because I'm so glad
you came, Lizzie, and you such a fine lady," she whispered. "I hadn't
nobody left." She sat up and wiped away her tears on her ragged apron.

"I seen you at that boarding-house where Charles Stuart was," she
continued, "but you looked so grand I wouldn't let on to you I was
there. I thought you wouldn't want me. And I wouldn't let him tell
even Jean. But the woman wouldn't keep me, I was no good, and I was
ashamed to tell Charles Stuart I'd gone, he was so awful good, and so
me and grandaddy moved in here and I didn't