ks should have covered that. She watched
the mails anxiously. As she returned from the library on the
twenty-fourth day since she had sent her request, she decided that
unless she should hear that night, she would have Elsie Moss telegraph
from New York. For the end of October approached, and she felt she
couldn't face the crisis of the 1st of November, without the aid and
the moral support of the money.

She was surprised to see the doctor's motor-car standing at the door,
and startled when Kate, wild-eyed and dishevelled, met her at the
threshold.

"Uncle John? Has anything happened?" she faltered.

"No, it ain't him. He's in the city, pore lamb, and it's myself is
thankful you'll be here to tell him. It's her. Riggs was here
a-dunnin' me for his money soon after you left, and nothin' would do
but that I should go up to her whiles he waits in the kitchen. And a
lucky thing it was, too, for there he was to go for the doctor--we both
forgot clean about the telephone."

"But what is it?" cried Elsie.

"I found her on the floor like a log, Miss Elsie. She ain't dead at
all, but she ain't come to, and maybe won't from taking of too many of
them headache-powders as I knew was no good but didn't think no harm
of."

On a sudden, without warning, Kate dropped her head upon Elsie's
shoulder and began to sob wildly.

"Oh, Katy, don't," begged Elsie, truly distressed. "You and I must
keep up for the sake of----"

"Of himself, miss, I know," sobbed Kate, "but, oh, I feel as if it was
my own mother--or my own baby, I don't know which."

CHAPTER XIX

Elsie Moss's school was quite unlike her expectations, and her
companions not at all like those of her eager dreams. Just as at art
school one begins, she knew, with the study and copying of the antique,
so the girl had supposed that in studying for the stage, one would
approach it through the masterpieces of the drama. On the contrary,
she didn't so much as hear the name of Shakespeare or of any other dead
or classic dramatist during the first two months; and though she had to
work as hard as she had expected to do, it sometimes seemed as if it
were practice that didn't really count. The drill seemed to be all in
the way of suppleness of limb and facility of facial expression without
intellectual stimulus; indeed, it almost seemed as if the whole
tendency of the school was rather narcotic than stimulating.

Further, the girls with whom she came in cont