in this same silent way; and the author had laid it down as a law
that all quiet widowers are the kind who never, never marry again. This
thought had taken root in her mind; and she applied it now to Joe.

Soon at his suggestion she began to use some of Amy's things. One night
when they were going out, he helped her slip into her sister's soft
luxurious sable cloak. And as she turned, she detected a queerly
uncertain look in Joe's eyes. But in an instant it was gone, and she
soon dismissed her uneasiness. For through the weeks that followed he
became engrossed in his business and barely noticed her at all.

CHAPTER VI

About this time a letter from home brought her a sharp disappointment.
Ethel was not a good correspondent, but during the homesick winter
months she had written several times to three of the girls she had known
in school. Two had gone west, but the other one was still in Ohio and
was planning to come to New York, to take a course of training as nurse
in one of the hospitals. In fact it had been all arranged. And Ethel
had not realized how much she had counted on this friend, until now a
letter came announcing her engagement to a young doctor in Detroit. She
was going there to live, and her letter was full of her happiness.
Ethel was very blue that night.

But only a few days after this she received another missive that had
quite a different effect. It was a long bulky epistle, a "round robin"
from the members of the little high school club to which she had
belonged at home. The girls had scattered far and wide. One was
teaching music in an Oklahoma town; another had gone to Cleveland and
was a stenographer in a broker's office there; a third was in Chicago,
the wife of a young lawyer; and a fourth had married an engineer who was
working a mine in Montana. It made an absorbing narrative, and she read
it several times. At first it took her out of herself, far, far out all
over the land. How good it was to get news of them all, how nice and
gossipy and gay. It was almost as though they were here in the room;
she seemed to be talking with each one; and as they chatted on and on,
the feeling grew in Ethel that each was starting like herself and that
some were having no easy time in unfamiliar places. She could read
between the lines.

But the part that struck her most was the contribution of their former
history "prof," a little lame woman with snappy black eyes, who had been
the leading spirit in the