vestrymen's wives
preferred the other candidate (friend of the organist and tenor), who
lived with her mother in the city, and patronized no Sunday trains;
whose garments were nicely adjusted to the requirements of the position,
following the fashions carefully indeed, but at a distance, and with
chastened salaried humility as well; who sang correctly, but with none
of that fervor which the vestrymen's wives considered so "out of place
in a church"; and whose face certainly had none of those outlines and
hues which so reprehensibly attracted "the attention of the gentlemen."
And thus Anne was dismissed.

It was a bitterly cold morning. The scantily furnished rooms of the
half-house looked dreary and blank; old Nora, groaning with rheumatism,
sat drawn up beside the kitchen stove. Anne, who had one French lesson
to give, and the farewell visit to make at the residence of Mrs.
Iverson, Cora's mother, went in to the city. She gave the lesson, and
then walked down to the Scheffels' lodging to bear the dark tidings of
her dismissal. The musical instrument maker's window was frosted nearly
to the top; but he had made a round hole inside with a hot penny, and he
was looking through it when Anne rang the street bell. It was startling
to see a human eye so near, isolated by the frost-work--an eye and
nothing more; but she was glad he could amuse himself even after that
solitary fashion. Herr Scheffel had not returned from his round of
lessons. Anne waited some time in the small warm crowded room, where
growing plants, canary-birds, little plaster busts of the great
musicians, the piano, and the stove crowded each other cheerfully, but
he did not come. Mrs. Scheffel urged her to remain all night. "It ees zo
beetter cold." But Anne took leave, promising to come again on the
morrow. It was after four o'clock, and darkness was not far distant; the
piercing wind swept through the streets, blowing the flinty dust before
it; the ground was frozen hard as steel. She made her farewell visit at
Mrs. Iverson's, took her music-books, and said good-by, facing the
effusive regrets of Cora as well as she could, and trying not to think
how the money thus relinquished would be doubly needed now. Then she
went forth into the darkening street, the door of the warm, brightly
lighted home closing behind her like a knell. She had chosen twilight
purposely for this last visit, in order that she might neither see nor
be seen. She shivered now as the wi