re had received its final shock. If only there was some one
upon whose shoulder she could lay her head she imagined that it might
not be half so hard. There was Mrs. Terriberry, but after what had
happened could she be sure even of Mrs. Terriberry? Could any
inconsequential person like herself be sure of anybody if it conflicted
with their interests? It seemed not. She shrank from voicing the
thought, but the truth was she dared not put Mrs. Terriberry's
friendship to any test.

"The best way to have friends," she whispered bitterly with a lump in
her aching throat, "is not to need them."

She dreaded the beginning of another day, but it must be gotten through
somehow, and not only that day but the day after that and all the
innumerable, dreary days ahead of her. Finally she crept shivering to
bed to await the ordeal of another to-morrow.

The long shadows of the afternoon's sun lay in the backyard of the
Terriberry House when Essie sat down in the doorway to rest before her
evening's work began. The girl's sad face rested in the palm of her hand
and her shoulders drooped wearily as Mrs. Abe Tutts in her blue flannel
yachting cap came down the road beside her friend Mrs. Jackson, who
rustled richly in the watered silk raincoat which advertised the fact
that she was either going to or returning from a social function. Mrs.
Jackson's raincoat was a sure signal of social activity.

"Let's walk up clost along the fence and see how she's takin' it,"
suggested Mrs. Tutts amiably. "Gittin' the mitten is some of a pill to
swaller. Don't you speak to her, Mis' Jackson?"

Mrs. Jackson glanced furtively over her shoulder and observed that Mrs.
Symes was still standing on the veranda.

"If I come upon her face to face, but I don't go out of my way a-tall,"
she added in unconscious imitation of Mrs. Symes's newly-acquired
languor of speech. "One rully can't afford to after her bein' _so_
indiscreet and all."

"Rotten, I says" declared Mrs. Tutts tersely.

"She looks kinda pale around the gills s'well as I can see from here,"
opined Mrs. Jackson, staring critically as they passed along. They
tittered audibly. "I tell you what, Mrs. Tutts, Essie ought to get to
work and marry some man what'll put her right up in society where Alva
put me."

A biting comment which it caused Mrs. Tutts real suffering to suppress
was upon the tip of that lady's tongue, but it was gradually being borne
in upon her that the first families were n