ask by something more than the
mere desire to serve. In her case the gift of her youth and her
illusions had done others no real good, and had more or less saddened
her life forever. If she were to really go on with the work, it would
only be by giving up the world--her world,--abandoning her life, with
its luxury, its love, everything she had been bred to, and longed for.
She did not feel a call to do that, so she chose the existence to which
she had been born; the love of a man in her own set,--but the shadow of
too much knowledge sat on her like a shadow of fear.

She was impatient with herself, the world, living,--and there was no
cab in sight.

She looked at her watch. Half past four.

It was foolish not to have driven over, but she had felt it absurd,
always, to go about this kind of work in a private carriage, and
to-day she could not, as she usually did, take a street car for fear
of meeting friends. They thought her queer enough as it was.

An impatient ejaculation escaped her, and like an echo of it she heard
a child's voice beside her.

She looked down.

It was a poor miserable specimen. At first she was not quite sure
whether it were boy or girl.

Whimpering and mopping its nose with a very dirty hand, the child
begged money for a sick mother--a dying mother--and begged as if not
accustomed to it--all the time with an eye for that dread of New
England beggars, the man in the blue coat and brass buttons.

Miss Moreland was so consciously irritated with life that she was
unusually gentle. She stooped down. The child did not seem six years
old. The face was not so very cunning. It was not ugly, either. It was
merely the epitome of all that Miss Moreland tried to forget--the
little one born without a chance in the world.

With a full appreciation of the child's fear of the police,--begging
is a crime in many American towns--she carefully questioned her,
watching for the dreaded officer herself.

It was the old story--a dying mother--no father--no one to do
anything--a child sent out to cunningly defy the law, but it seemed to
be only for bread.

Obviously the thing to do was to deliver the child up to the police.
It would be at once properly cared for, and the mother also.

But Miss Moreland knew too much of official charity to be guilty of
that.

The easiest thing was to give her money. But, unluckily, she belonged
to a society pledged not to give alms in the streets, and her sense of
the powe