mured Lydia, lifting Ariadne down from her high-chair
and untying the napkin from about her thin little neck.

The introduction of a new element in her surroundings had for a moment
broken the thread of her exalted resolutions. She wondered with a sore
heart, as though it had been a common lovers' quarrel, how she and Paul
could ever get over the first sight of each other again. She was
wondering how, with the most passionate resolve in the world, she could
do anything at all under the leaden garment of physical fatigue which
would weigh her down in the months to come.

Miss Burgess began in her best style, which she so evidently considered
very good indeed, that she could not doubt Lydia's attention. It was all
about a home for working-women she explained; a new charity which had
come from the East, had caught on like anything among the Smart Set of
Columbus, and was about to be introduced into Endbury. The most
exclusive young people in Columbus--the East End Set (Miss Burgess had a
genius for achieving oral capitalization) gave a parlor play for the
first benefit there, in one of the Old Broad Street Homes, and they were
willing to repeat it in Endbury to introduce it there. A Perfectly
splendid crowd was sure to come, tickets could be Any Price, and the
hostess who lent her house to it could have the glory of a most unique
affair. Mrs. Lowder would be overwhelmed with delight to have the pick
of the Society of the Capital at her house, but Miss Burgess had thought
it such an opportunity for Miss Lydia to come out of mourning with,
since it was for charity. She motioned Lydia, about to speak, sternly to
silence: "You said you wouldn't interrupt! And you haven't let me say
_half_ yet! That's your side of it--the side your dear mother would
think of if she were only here; but there's another side that you can't,
you _oughtn't_ to resist!" She finished her tea with a hasty swallow
and, going around the table, sat down by Lydia, laying her hand
impressively on the young matron's slim arm. "You're the sweetest thing
in the world, of course, but, like other people of your fortunate class,
you can't realize how perfectly awfully lucky you are, nor how unlucky
_poor_ people are! Of course it stands to reason that you can't even
imagine the life of a working-woman--you, a woman of entire leisure,
with every want supplied before you speak of it by a husband who adores
you! Why, Miss Lydia, to give you some idea let me tell you