n would take me to
Dover Street--in a carriage!--and we would all be reunited, and laugh
and cry together. The old gentleman, of course, would engage my father
as his steward, on the spot, and we would all go to live in one of his
houses, with a garden around it.

I walked on and on, gleefully aware that I had not eaten since
morning. Wasn't I beginning to feel shaky? Yes; I should certainly
faint before long. But I didn't like the houses I passed. They did not
look fit for my adventure. I must keep up till I reached a better
neighborhood.

Anybody who knows Boston knows how cheaply my adventure ended.
Columbus Avenue leads out to Roxbury Crossing. When I saw that the
houses were getting shabbier, instead of finer, my heart sank. When I
came out on the noisy, thrice-commonplace street-car centre, my spirit
collapsed utterly.

I did not swoon. I woke up from my foolish, childish dream with a
shock. I was disgusted with myself, and frightened besides. It was
evening now, and I was faint and sick in good earnest, and I did not
know where I was. I asked a starter at the transfer station the way to
Dover Street, and he told me to get on a car that was just coming in.

"I'll walk," I said, "if you will please tell me the shortest way."
How could I spend five cents out of the little I had made?

But the starter discouraged me.

"You can't walk it before midnight--the way you look, my girl. Better
hop on that car before it goes."

I could not resist the temptation. I rode home in the car, and felt
like a thief when I paid the fare. Five cents gone to pay for my
folly!

I was grateful for a cold supper; thrice grateful to hear that Mrs.
Hutch, the landlady, had been and gone, content with two dollars that
my father had brought home.

Mrs. Hutch seldom succeeded in collecting the full amount of the rents
from her tenants. I suppose that made the bookkeeping complicated,
which must have been wearing on her nerves; and hence her temper. We
lived, on Dover Street, in fear of her temper. Saturday had a distinct
quality about it, derived from the imminence of Mrs. Hutch's visit. Of
course I awoke on Saturday morning with the no-school feeling; but the
grim thing that leaped to its feet and glowered down on me, while the
rest of my consciousness was still yawning on its back, was the
Mrs.-Hutch-is-coming-and-there's-no-rent feeling.

It is hard, if you are a young girl, full of life and inclined to be
glad, to go to sleep