left the room. Edward
picked up the Banner and pretended to read it, while Janet collected the
salt and put it back into the shaker. Hannah, gathering up the rest of
the dishes, disappeared into the kitchen, but presently returned, as
though she had forgotten something.

"Hadn't you better go after her?" she said to Janet.

"I'm afraid it won't be any use. She's got sort of queer, lately--she
thinks they're down on her."

"I'm sorry I spoke so sharp. But then--" Hannah shook her head, and her
sentence remained unfinished.

Janet sought her sister, but returned after a brief interval, with the
news that Lise had gone out.

One of the delights of friendship, as is well known, is the exchange of
confidences of joy or sorrow, but there was, in Janet's promotion,
something intensely personal to increase her natural reserve. Her
feelings toward Ditmar were so mingled as to defy analysis, and several
days went by before she could bring herself to inform Eda Rawle of the
new business relationship in which she stood to the agent of the
Chippering Mill. The sky was still bright as they walked out Warren
Street after supper, Eda bewailing the trials of the day just ended: Mr.
Frye, the cashier of the bank, had had one of his cantankerous fits, had
found fault with her punctuation, nothing she had done had pleased him.
But presently, when they had come to what the Banner called the
"residential district," she was cheered by the sight of the green lawns,
the flowerbeds and shrubbery, the mansions of those inhabitants of
Hampton unfamiliar with boardinghouses and tenements. Before one of these
she paused, retaining Janet by the arm, exclaiming wistfully:

"Wouldn't you like to live there? That belongs to your boss."

Janet, who had been dreaming as she gazed at the facade of rough stucco
that once had sufficed to fill the ambitions of the late Mrs. Ditmar,
recognized it as soon as Eda spoke, and dragged her friend hastily,
almost roughly along the sidewalk until they had reached the end of the
block. Janet was red.

"What's the matter?" demanded Eda, as soon as she had recovered from her
surprise.

"Nothing," said Janet. "Only--I'm in his office."

"But what of it? You've got a right to look at his house, haven't you?"

"Why yes,--a right," Janet assented. Knowing Eda's ambitions for her were
not those of a business career, she was in terror lest her friend should
scent a romance, and for this reason she had never spoke