d led to a tiny,
dilapidated cottage. Caroline had more than once passed it by under
the impression that it was abandoned, or used perhaps for storing
ice or wood; but to-day a thin curl of smoke stained the blue above
it and through the open door of the one living-room that formed its
ground-floor she saw a scarlet Navajo blanket, on which reposed a
magnificent snowy Angora cat. A great green bough covered one of the
walls, and a few chairs, a square pine table and a guitar flung
against a pile of bright cushions, completed the furniture. At the
further end of the room, stretched upon the mate to the Angora's
blanket, lay a young woman, sobbing violently.

Caroline hesitated, but Henry D. Thoreau recognized grief, and knew
perfectly well what to do. Stepping quietly over to the prostrate
figure he encircled it once, looking for a point of vantage, then
selecting two little white, pink-tipped fingers, he licked them
caressingly.

The sobbing ceased: the girl drew a longer shaking breath.

"Is that you, Mimi?" she said huskily, "I didn't know you cared as
much as--oh, what is that?"

Her hand had fallen on the little bull-dog's smooth, stiff coat and
she started up in surprise. Caroline smiled shyly into her big,
stained gray eyes.

"It's all right--Henry D. never bites--do you feel bad?" she asked.

The girl pushed back a handful of crinkly, chestnut hair from her
damp face and rose, shaking out her skirts.

"Y--yes," she said, frankly, "yes, I do. Do you know why?"

"No. Why?" Caroline inquired.

"Because I can't make huckleberry bread," the girl assured her
solemnly. "I--I've been trying all the morning. Look in there."

Caroline peered into the little lean-to, filled to over-flowing with
a stove, some tin cooking pans, a table full of soiled dishes and a
case of kitchen sundries, half unpacked.

"You did get it all over, didn't you?" she observed cheerfully,
noting the prints of doughy fingers on oven and chairs and the
burned, odorous wreck, resting in soggy isolation in the middle of
the floor. "You cooked it a little too much, maybe."

"Maybe," the girl assented listlessly. "I was going to have it for
luncheon. The woman promised to be here by ten o'clock, and I got
the breakfast well enough--after a fashion--but she hasn't come, and
I'm s-so hungry!"

Her eyes filled again. "It's simply filthy here," she murmured. "Do
you know anybody we could depend on--oh, how stupid of me, of course
you don't