t her
promise to the letter. Druse could not feel that she could be much
consolation to so elegant a being. Miss De Courcy was often _distraite_
when she brought her crocheting in of an afternoon, or else she was
extremely, not to say boisterously gay, and talked or laughed
incessantly, or sang at the upright piano that looked too large for the
little parlor. The songs were apt to be compositions with such titles
as, "Pretty Maggie Kelly," and "Don't Kick him when He's Down," but
Druse never heard anything more reprehensible, and she thought them
beautiful.

Sometimes, quite often indeed, her hostess had the headaches that forced
her to resort to the doctor's disagreeable remedy from the black bottle,
or was sleeping off a headache on the sofa. Miss De Courcy did not seem
to have many women friends. Once, it is true, two ladies with brilliant
golden hair, and cheeks flushed perhaps by the toilsome ascent to the
fourth floor, rustled loudly into the parlor. They were very gay, and so
finely dressed, one in a bright green plush coat, and the other in a
combination of reds, that Druse made a frightened plunge for the door
and escaped, but not before one of the ladies had inquired, with a peal
of laughter, "Who's the kid?" Druse had flushed resentfully, but she did
not care when her friend told her afterward, with a toss of the head,
"_They're_ nothing. They just come here to see how I was fixed."

After a little Druse offered timidly to clean up the room for her, and
quite regularly then, would appear on each Wednesday with her broom and
duster, happy to be allowed to bring order out of chaos.

"Well, you are a good little thing," Miss De Courcy would say, pulling
on her yellow gloves and starting for the street when the dust began to
fly. She never seemed to be doing anything. A few torn books lay about,
but Druse never saw her open them. She had warned Druse not to come in
of an evening, for her brother might be home in a temper. Druse thought
she saw him once, such a handsome man with his hair lightly tinged with
gray; he was turning down the hall as Druse came wearily up the stairs,
and she saw him go in Miss De Courcy's room; but then again when Gusty
was sick, and she had to go down at night and beg the janitress to come
up and see if it were the measles, there was a much younger man, with
reddened eyes, from whose glance Druse shrank as she passed him, and he
certainly reeled a little, and he also went in Miss De