"office," passed into a room
beyond, pushed Jane ahead of her, and shut the door....

The door closed with a light click, and Jane looked about her with a
great and sudden surprise. Poor stupid, stumbling child!--she
understood at last in what spirit she had been received and on what
footing she had been placed.

She found herself in a small, cramped, low-ceiled room which was
filled with worn and antiquated furniture. There was a ponderous old
mahogany bureau, with the veneering cracked and peeled, and a bed to
correspond. There was a shabby little writing-desk, whose let-down lid
was lined with faded and blotted green baize. On the floor there was
an old Brussels carpet, antique as to pattern, and wholly threadbare
as to surface. The walls were covered with an old-time paper whose
plaintive primitiveness ran in slender pink stripes alternating with
narrow green vines. In one corner stood a small upright piano whose
top was littered with loose sheets of old music, and on one wall hung
a set of thin black-walnut shelves strung together with cords and
loaded with a variety of well-worn volumes. In the grate was a coal
fire.

Mrs. Bates sat down on the foot of the bed, and motioned Jane to a
small rocker that had been re-seated with a bit of old rugging.

"And now," she said, cheerily, "let's get to business. Sue Bates, at
your service."

"Oh, no," gasped Jane, who felt, however dumbly and mistily, that this
was an epoch in her life. "Not here; not to-day."

"Why not? Go ahead; tell me all about the charity that isn't a
charity. You'd better; this is the last room--there's nothing beyond."
Her eyes were twinkling, but immensely kind.

"I know it," stammered Jane. "I knew it in a second." She felt too
that not a dozen persons had ever penetrated to this little chamber.
"How good you are to me!"

Presently, under some compulsion, she was making an exposition of her
small plan. Mrs. Bates was made to understand how some of the old
Dearborn Seminary girls were trying to start a sort of club-room in
some convenient down-town building for typewriters and saleswomen and
others employed in business. There was to be a room where they could
get lunch, or bring their own to eat, if they preferred; also a parlor
where they could fill up their noon hour with talk or reading or
music; it was the expectation to have a piano and a few books and
magazines.

"I remembered Lottie as one of the girls who went with us there, down