literary reviewer."

"She's a stunner. What's her name?"

"Miss Drury."

"You might introduce me."

"She's busy."

"Probably she'd go to lunch with us."

"She refuses to go out with any one."

"Hasn't been here long, eh?" That was the floorwalker's idea. "Well, I
must get back, if you can't go with me. So long."

Henry took a book into Miss Drury's room. "Here's something that was
sent to me personally," said he, "but treat it as you think it
deserves."

She looked up with a suggestion of a smile. "Are you willing to trust
the reputation of your friends to me?" she asked.

"I am at least willing to let you take charge of their vanity."

"Oh, am I so good a keeper of vanity?"

"No, you are so gentle an exterminator of it."

"Thank you," she said, laughing. Her hair seemed ready to break from
its fastenings, and she gave it those deft touches of security which
are mysterious to man, but which a little girl practices on a doll.

"You have wonderful hair," he said.

And she answered: "I'm going to cut it off."

This is woman's almost invariable reply to such a compliment. Henry
knew that she would say it, and she knew that she would not cut it
off, and they both laughed.

"How did you happen to get into newspaper work?" he asked.

Her face became serious. "I had to do something," she answered, "and
I couldn't do anything else. My mother was an invalid for ten years,
and I nursed her, read to her day and night. Sometimes in the winter
she couldn't sleep, and I would get up and amuse her by writing
reviews of the books I had read. It was only play, but after she was
dead I thought that I might make it earnest."

"And your father died when you were very young, I suppose."

She looked away, and with both hands she began to touch her hair
again. "Yes," she said.

"Tell me about him."

"Why about him?"

"I don't know. Because you have told me about your mother, I suppose."

"And are you so much interested in me?" she asked, looking earnestly
at him.

"Yes."

"I ought not to tell you, but I will. We lived in the country. My
father was"--She looked about her and then at him. "My father was a
drunkard, but my mother loved him devotedly. One day he went to the
village, several miles away, and at evening he didn't come home, and
my mother knew the cause. It was a cold, snowy night. Mother stood at
the gate, holding a lantern. She wouldn't let me stand there with her,
it was so cold, but I was on my