studies how to come to New York and after a while I gets here."

Tom finished his recital and smiled down at his listener.

"But Tom," Hertha asked, "wasn't Ellen terribly disappointed?"

"She's reconciled," he said dryly.

Hertha thought of Ellen and the wreckage of her plans, and surmised that
there must have been a stormy period before reconciliation.

"It seems strange, Tom," she said at length, "that you should be here in
New York alone."

"I ain't alone," he replied, "not exactly alone. I's boarding with a
lady from the South."

"Why, that's just the way it is with me," Hertha said. "Isn't that odd!"

"Do you get enough to eat?" Tom asked.

"Plenty. Don't you?"

"Oh, I suppose so," the boy said tolerantly. "It stand ter reason city
folks can't feed you like they do at home. When you have to put down a
nickel or a dime for every mite o' food you buy, for every pinch o' corn
meal, and every orange, it comes hard to set much on the table. And if a
feller goes out to one o' these restaurants to feed, why before he's
reached the pie, if he don't look out, he's eat up his day's wages."

"Eaten, Tom."

"Yes'm, eaten."

"I do hope you aren't going to be careless in the way you talk, Tom. I
hope you haven't learned a lot of new slang."

"Yes'm."

"You look well, anyway!" Hertha said, surveying him carefully.

She was pleased not only at his good health, but at the way he dressed,
the evident care he had taken to be neat and cleanly. Her pride in him
grew for she could see that he had improved as he had taken on
responsibility. Evidently it had thus far worked well for him to break
loose from his women folk and school and to shift for himself.

"What you doing, Hertha?" Tom questioned.

She told him a little of her life, her pleasant room upstairs, her work
at stenography. But she preferred to listen, and before long he was
again the chief talker, retailing every bit of news, no matter how
trivial, that had come in the letters from home. Her eagerness was so
evident, and her happiness in seeing him so apparent, that Tom wondered
to himself why she had never given them the chance to communicate with
her during the months she had been away. As though she sensed his
question she said, hesitating, the blood rushing to her cheeks:

"You mustn't think I didn't want to hear from everybody; I did so much.
And I sent them cards at Christmas that I was well. Were you at school
then?"

For answer he drew from