y: "Why not stay here?"

"Don't be ridiculous," Esther answered. Then she examined the bed. "Two
couldn't sleep here," she said.

"Oh yes, they could," said Debby, thoughtfully bisecting the blanket
with her hand. "And the bed's quite clean or I wouldn't venture to ask
you. Maybe it's not so soft as you've been used to."

Esther pondered; she was fatigued and she had undergone too many
poignant emotions already to relish the hunt for a lodging. It was
really lucky this haven offered itself. "I'll stay for to-night,
anyhow," she announced, while Debby's face lit up as with a bonfire of
joy. "To-morrow we'll discuss matters further. And now, dear, can I help
you with your sewing?"

"No, Esther, thank you kindly. You see there's only enough for one,"
said Debby apologetically. "To-morrow there may be more. Besides you
were never as clever with your needle as your pen. You always used to
lose marks for needlework, and don't you remember how you herring-boned
the tucks of those petticoats instead of feather-stitching them? Ha, ha,
ha! I have often laughed at the recollection."

"Oh, that was only absence of mind," said Esther, tossing her head in
affected indignation. "If my work isn't good enough for you, I think
I'll go down and help Becky with her machine." She put on her bonnet,
and, not without curiosity, descended a flight, of stairs and knocked at
a door which, from the steady whirr going on behind it, she judged to be
that of the work-room.

"Art thou a man or a woman?" came in Yiddish the well-remembered tones
of the valetudinarian lady.

"A woman!" answered Esther in German. She was glad she learned German;
it would be the best substitute for Yiddish in her new-old life.

"_Herein_!" said Mrs. Belcovitch, with sentry-like brevity.

Esther turned the handle, and her surprise was not diminished when she
found herself not in the work-room, but in the invalid's bedroom. She
almost stumbled over the pail of fresh water, the supply of which was
always kept there. A coarse bouncing full-figured young woman, with
frizzly black hair, paused, with her foot on the treadle of her machine,
to stare at the newcomer. Mrs. Belcovitch, attired in a skirt and a
night-cap, stopped aghast in the act of combing out her wig, which hung
over an edge of the back of a chair, that served as a barber's block.
Like the apple-woman, she fancied the apparition a lady
philanthropist--and though she had long ceased to take charity, the