LLE.

"Here I am, bobbing up serenely with
_something_, but still unable to say whether it
be pearl or pebble. Mrs. Blythe is not the
grand personage I pictured her to be, for there
was no liveried footman to meet me at the
station, no carriage in waiting. Nor is she an
author. Mrs. Crum, the landlady of this
caravansary, told me that. I rattled up in a
'bus to the number of the house given in Mrs.
Blythe's telegram, and found it to be a
comfortable looking boarding-house on a quiet
side street, shaded by scraggly old sycamores.
Mrs. Blythe had engaged a room for me here, and
left a note telling me where and how to find
her in the morning.

"It was so near supper-time that Mrs. Crum had
to go right down-stairs before I could ask any
more questions, and I followed in a very few
moments. I am disappointed in one thing. I had
hoped to be in an interesting private family. I
had hoped that Mrs. Blythe would want me to
stay in her house, but I think I shall like it
here.

"My room is big and airy and simply furnished,
the supper was good, and as far as I can see
I'm lots better off than Jo was in 'Little
Women,' when she left home to be a governess.
For one thing, there is no old bearded
professor in the background to work on one's
sympathies and get interested in, in lieu of
some one better. Of course Professor Baher was
dear in lots of ways, but I never could forgive
Jo for marrying that bewhiskered old Teuton.

"So far as I have discovered, the boarders are
all widows and orphans, though the oldest
orphan is old enough to vote, and is a
reporter on the Riverville _Herald_. He sat
next to me at the table, at supper, and I found
out from him that my first guess was partly
correct, even if there was no liveried footman
to meet me at the station. Mrs. Blythe _is_ one
of the social leaders of Riverville and has a
lovely home. But this city isn't large enough
to justify any one's keeping a social
secretary. He said so. It's just a big,
commonplace, hustling manufacturing town like a
hundred others in the middle West. I didn't
like to ask