l-children came running toward her.
"Lowizy said you was up here. I came to look for you. Here 's a note
Jane Pray sent."

DEAR VESTY: You told me last meetun you was comern up to sett with me
and my border some evening. Come tonyte. hees a poor erflickted
creetur, seems to me. hees lamer 'an ever an smaller 'an ever this
week, an' the burth-scalds on his face shows more, seems to me. Ef
that he was payin' 3 dollars a week, I should feel easier, bring your
soing an' sett a good long spale.

yours truly,
JANE PRAY.

Vesty came, just as the firelight grew welcome and tender. She put
aside her hat and shawl, unrolled her parcel of sewing-work, and sat
down by the little lamp at one end of the room with Miss Pray.

She took in my presence naturally, with no obtrusive kindness; she was
at a necessitous task--putting a broad gray patch, the best available
from the resources at home, on Jimmy Kirtland's brown jacket, doing it
deftly with her supple hands.

"You'll be doing that for some boys of your own by and by," said Miss
Pray, intending to have a cheerful evening.

Vesty grew sweet and pale; she shook her head. Her dark eye-sockets
had a look, I thought, as though she had been ill and fasting. I mused
in the firelight.

"And what if that should not be your fate indeed, Vesta Kirtland: not
bearing, and toil, and pain, and all the heart-breaking vicissitudes of
woman's life, but some peculiar station?

"So tall and gracious, to go robed costly, to ride splendidly accoutred
and attended, to condescend almost to _all_, to give gracious
_downward_ smiles.

"What if they knew the power of wealth and alien rank, for that matter,
I held in that miserable, lean, little paw of mine! You should
outshine Grace Langham as the sun, Vesty. Some time, if she were
wronged and sorrowful, could I point her, delicately, with all
forbearance and worship of my own, that way?"

"Be you rebellious?" Unsuccessful in her cheerful attempts with Vesty,
Jane Pray had turned to me.

But Vesty resented her companion's question, almost involuntarily
turning to me with a quick and awful pity.

(No; I had been lost, dreaming: not that way, surely; not though her
heart were moved with the purest pity angels could bestow; not thou,
Vesty, above all, sweet one, beautiful one! to a union so unfit and
repelling.)

But I had to bring my thoughts back from a long way to answer Miss
Fray's question.

"No," I said. "I settled