n picnics, of
picnics in ruined castles shared with numerous boy and girl friends
flashed through Eleanor's mind. And this girl whose lot she had found it
in her heart to envy a short time back had known none of these things.

"And had I not met you," Margaret was saying confidingly when Eleanor
came out of the sombre mood into which she had suddenly fallen, "I should
never have had the courage even to open my lunch, at least I could not
have eaten it in a railway carriage with every one staring at me. Could
you have eaten your lunch under such circumstances?"

"Oh, yes, I think I could," Eleanor returned with some amusement.

Probably their ages were very much the same, but what a child Margaret
was compared to her! To make up for that, however, she certainly used
much longer words.

"How did your grandfather come to allow you to travel alone?" she asked
suddenly. "From what you have told me about him I should have thought it
was the very last thing he should have allowed you to do."

"He was very reluctant to give me permission to travel without an
escort," Margaret answered, "but he was unable to avoid doing so." And
then she related how the housekeeper who was to have brought her had
broken her leg, and how a sudden epidemic of scarlet fever in the village
had made it advisable for her departure not to be delayed.

"Of course," she added, "my grandfather was not aware that I should miss
the train and be obliged to wait here, or else I am quite sure he would
not have allowed me to come by myself. But please, please do not let us
talk about me any longer. I want to hear about you now and, except that
your name is Eleanor Kathleen Carson, I do not know anything at all about
you."

"There is not much to tell," returned Eleanor; "and what there is is not
particularly interesting; but fair is fair, as the children say. Know,
then, to begin with, that I have even fewer relations in the world than
you, for I have none at all."

"None!" Margaret exclaimed incredulously. "Then with whom do you live?
Where is your home?"

"I have no home. I have been earning my living for the last three years,"
Eleanor answered.

"Earning your own living. But are you not too young to do that? In what
manner do you earn it?"

"As a governess. I have been an instructor of the young for the last four
years," Eleanor said, laughing a little at the expression of boundless
amazement which this statement brought to Margaret's face. Indee