leaded almost with tears that she was simply a student who had not
studied enough to know, only to feel; and she blushed deeply. So she was
reprieved. Meanwhile the doctor (who had been quietly working up a
practise in our town for six years) began to be seen at the bedsides of
divers prominent ladies.

Several of us asked the sisters to luncheon, to dinner and to bridge
parties. In return, the sisters entertained the club at tea, a function
whereat Katy covered herself with glory, and Nellie graciously consented
to pass plates and listen and break two heavy Colonial goblets--Nellie
was slim and light on her feet, but she surely had a heavy hand.

Katy came over to borrow our monkey wrench the next morning because
Nellie and the friend whom she had recommended to assist in waiting, had
contrived to loosen a water faucet. She was brimming with criticisms of
this last helper, as well as of Nellie.

"Did she stay to help wash dishes?" Thus she let her suppressed disgust
explode. "Well, I should _say_! And got extry pay for staying, too, and
had her young man in for supper afterward; and the things she gave him
to carry away, the fancy candies with bow-knots on them, and the cakes
with roses, and the _marionglasyes_! And when I spoke up to her she
claimed Miss Mercy _told_ her to--and there's no saying, maybe she did!
Her young man's on strike; he's at the locomotive works; she claims he
gits four-fifty a day and he's striking for more, I expect; he's been on
strike six weeks now, and he comes here to meals four times a week and
eats--well, Miss Mercy said, 'Make him welcome,' so I do; but I own to
you, Miss Patsy, something I feel real bad about. That young Mr. Gordon,
it's his pa is president of the works; he's a real nice young man jest
out of Harvard College, and he met Miss Mercy in Chicago and went 'round
a lot with her, and I made up my mind and Nellie made up hers--and she
ain't a fool, Nellie, for all she's so flighty--that they were going to
make a match of it; but Nellie got Miss Mercy to promise she'd go speak
to old Mr. Gordon about the strike; Miss Mercy's got a awful lot of
stock herself, in the works; and I dunno the rights of it, but I'm sure
those young things had _words_! It's a bitter black shame, too, it is,
dragging that poor child in! Doctor don't like it any more than I do.
And poor little Miss Mercy, she's scared to death; but _that_ won't stop
her; the more it hurts, the more she is sure she had o