ose who had known her found time
to make something for dear little Josephine's baby, and the sending of
the things kept up the interest in her for some months.

Then the letters ceased again.

I can't be sure how long it was after that that I received a letter
from her. She told me that her husband was dead, that she never really
had taken root in Utica, and now that she was alone, with her baby to
support, she longed to come back to Boston, and asked my advice. Did I
think she could take up her old work?

I took the letter at once to the Matron of the Friendly Society--I
happened to be resting between two cases--and we decided that it was
safe. At least between us we could help her make the trial.

A few months later she came, and we went to the station to meet her. I
could not see that she had changed a bit. She did not look a day
older, and the bouncing baby she carried in her arms was a darling.

Of course she could not go back to the Association. That was not for
married women. But we found her a room just across the street, and in
no time, she dropped right back into the place she had left. Every
morning she took the baby boy to the _creche_ and every night she took
him home, and a better cared-for, better loved, more wisely bred
youngster was never born, nor a happier one. Every one loved him just
as every one loved Josephine.

There I thought Josephine's story ended, and so far as she was
concerned, it did.

But when the baby was six years old, and forward for his age, the
Matron of the Friendly Society came into my room one day, when I was
there to take a longer rest than usual, after a very trying case, and
told me that she was in great distress. A friend of hers, who had been
her predecessor, and was now the Matron of an Orphan Asylum in New
York State, was going to the hospital to have a cataract removed from
her eye, and had written to ask her to come and take her place while
she was away. She begged me to replace her at the Friendly Society
while she was gone. As her assistant was a capable young woman, and my
relations with every one were pleasant I was only too glad to consent.
She had always been so good to me.

She was gone a month.

On her return I noticed that she was distressed about something. I
taxed her with it. She said it was nothing she felt like talking
about. But one evening when Josephine had been sewing for me, after
she was gone, the Matron, who had been in my room, got up, and