deal
of a hero, western or otherwise. And now Lise was holding a newspaper:
not the Banner, whose provinciality she scorned, but a popular Boston
sheet to be had for a cent, printed at ten in the morning and labelled
"Three O'clock Edition," with huge red headlines stretched across the
top of the page:--

"JURY FINDS IN MISS NEALY'S FAVOR."

As Janet entered Lise looked up and exclaimed:--"Say, that Nealy girl's
won out!"

"Who is she?" Janet inquired listlessly.

"You are from the country, all right," was her sister's rejoinder. "I
would have bet there wasn't a Reub in the state that wasn't wise to the
Ferris breach of promise case, and here you blow in after the show's
over and want to know who Nelly Nealy is. If that doesn't beat the
band!"

"This woman sued a man named Ferris--is that it?"

"A man named Ferris!" Lise repeated, with the air of being appalled by
her sister's ignorance. "I guess you never heard of Ferris, either--the
biggest copper man in Boston. He could buy Hampton, and never feel it,
and they say his house in Brighton cost half a million dollars. Nelly
Nealy put her damages at one hundred and fifty thousand and stung him
for seventy five. I wish I'd been in court when that jury came back!
There's her picture."

To Janet, especially in the mood of reaction in which she found herself
that evening, Lise's intense excitement, passionate partisanship and
approval of Miss Nealy were incomprehensible, repellent. However, she
took the sheet, gazing at the image of the lady who, recently an obscure
stenographer, had suddenly leaped into fame and become a "headliner,"
the envied of thousands of working girls all over New England. Miss
Nealy, in spite of the "glare of publicity" she deplored, had borne up
admirably under the strain, and evidently had been able to consume three
meals a day and give some thought to her costumes. Her smile under the
picture hat was coquettish, if not bold. The special article, signed by
a lady reporter whose sympathies were by no means concealed and whose
talents were given free rein, related how the white-haired mother had
wept tears of joy; how Miss Nealy herself had been awhile too overcome
to speak, and then had recovered sufficiently to express her gratitude
to the twelve gentlemen who had vindicated the honour of American
womanhood. Mr. Ferris, she reiterated, was a brute; never as long as she
lived would she be able to forget how she had loved and believed