d magnanimously; "so do I; she's
a really beautiful girl, but you know how it is in a small town and I am
telling you for your own good that you can't afford to harbor her."

"I couldn't think of turning her out just when she needs a friend," Mrs.
Terriberry had replied with some decision, and Dr. Harpe's face had
hardened slightly at the answer.

"It's your own affair, naturally," she had returned indifferently; "but
I'll have to find accomodations elsewhere. If living in the same house
would injure me professionally, merely a boarder, you can guess what it
will do to you in a business way, and," she had added significantly,
"socially."

Mrs. Terriberry had looked startled. After hanging to the fringe until
she was all but exhausted, it was small wonder that she had no desire to
again go through the harrowing experience of overcoming Society's
objections to a hotelkeeper's wife.

"Certainly I don't blame you for hanging on to her as long as you can,"
Dr. Harpe had added, "and of course you would be the last to hear all
the gossip that there is about her. But, on the whole, isn't it rather a
high price to pay for--well, for a biscuit-shooter's friendship? Such
people really don't count, you know."

Mrs. Terriberry who had once shot biscuits in a "Harvey's Eating House"
murmured meekly--

"Of course not." But instantly ashamed of her weak disloyalty she had
declared with a show of spirit, "However, unless Hank says she must go
she can stay, for Essie has come pretty close to bein' like my own girl
to me."

Dr. Harpe had been satisfied to let it rest at that, for she felt sure
enough of Terriberry's answer.

"He needs my money, but if more pressure is necessary,"--she sniggered
at the recollection of Mr. Terriberry's sentimental leanings--"I can
spend an hour with him in the light of the 'meller moon.'"

Again Dr. Harpe was right. Mr. Terriberry needed the money, also his
fears took instant alarm at the thought of losing so popular and
influential a guest, one, who, as he told Mrs. Terriberry emphatically,
could do him a power of harm. The actual dismissal of the girl who had
grown to womanhood under his eyes he wisely left to his wife.

The girl stood up now, a slender, swaying figure: white, desolate, with
uplifted arms outstretched, she looked like a storm-whipped flower.

"Oh, what shall I do! Where shall I go!"

The low, broken-hearted cry of despair set Mrs. Terriberry's plain face
in lines of distres