failed to come, no cheery saying to one's heart, "Never mind, it will
surely come to-morrow." This state is infinitely better than the
hopeless glance one bestows upon the postman, realizing he is nothing to
them.

No friends--father and mother gone so long ago! That of one there was
no recollection at all, of the other, tender childhood memories, sweet
and lasting and incomparably precious, but only memories. No sister, no
brother, no cousins that had taken the place to her of sisters; only
that old uncle and aunt, who were such staid and common and plodding
people, that sometimes the very thought of them tired this girl so full
of life and energy.

Girl I call her, but she had passed the days of her girlhood. Few knew
it; it was wonderful how young and fresh her heart had kept. That being
the case, of course her face had taken the same impress. It was hard for
Ruth Erskine to realize that her friend Marion was really thirteen years
older than herself. There were times when Marion herself felt younger
than Ruth did.

But the years were there, and in her times of depression, Marion
realized it. So many of them recorded, and yet no friends to whom she
had a right, feeling sure that nothing in human experience this side of
death would be likely to come in and take her away from them. The very
supper-table at that boarding-house was sufficient to add to her sense
of desolation.

It is a pitiful fact that we are such dependent creatures that even the
crooked laying of a cloth, and the coffee-stains and milk-stains and
gravy-stains thereon, can add to our sense of friendlessness. Then, what
is there particularly consoling or cheering in a cup of weak tea and a
bit of bread a trifle sour, spread over by butter more than a trifle
strong; even though it is helped down by some very dry bits of chipped
beef? This was Marion's supper.

The boarders were, some of them, cross, some of them simply silent and
hurried, all of them damp, for they were every one workers out in the
damp, dreary world; the most of them, in fact, I may say all of them,
were very tired; yet many of them had work to do that very evening.
Marion ate her supper in silence, too; at least she bit at her bread and
tried to swallow her simpering tea.

When her heart was bright and her plans for the evening definite and
satisfactory, she could manage the sour bread and strong butter even,
with something like a relish, but there was no use in trying them
to