light
of purse. The cabbies left her therefore, unchallenged, to a lad as
shy and awkward as herself, who mumbled something about quiet,
reasonable rooms, and received her yielded bag with a surprise as great
as her own.

Miss Mary was by now almost light-headed from hunger and excitement.
At the slightest pressure she would have told her story to the first
interested stranger, and thus ended her adventure, most surely. But
Fate led her to the door of one too full of trouble to heed Miss
Mary's. To Mrs. Meeker she was a lodger certainly, a boarder
possibly--in any event, a source of income. So long had she been
waiting for Miss Mary that she fairly snatched her bag from her and
pushed her up the faded, decent stairs into the faded, decent bedroom
with the cracked china toilet-set. Any one, _any one_ would have been
welcome to Mrs. Meeker, and Miss Mary's quiet elegance and handsome
travelling-bag were far beyond her hopes.

"A real lady," she whispered to her nephew. "Ask if she'd like a
little something on a tray, Georgie. I could poach that egg, and
there's tea. I won't say anything about a week in advance. She looks
tired to death."

Miss Mary's famishing senses cried out loudly at sight of the meagre
tray, and as the egg and tea passed her lips a strange, eager sensation
was hers, a delicious, gratified climax of emotion: Miss Mary was glad
she was alive! She savoured each morsel of the pitiful meal; she could
have wished it doubled; the cheap tea filled her nostrils with a balmy
odour; she was hungry.

And hardly had the food satisfied her when her eyelids fell, her head
dropped forward. Approaching oblivion drugged her ere it reached her
and she dozed in her chair. But some instinct forced her to her feet
as the landlady appeared, and fumbling in her bag for her card-case and
pocketbook, she held herself awake.

"I'd like to pay," she murmured, "and then I'll--I'll go to bed. Will
you send some one, please?"

She meant some one to undress her, but Mrs. Meeker did not know this.

"It's--it's twelve a week, with board," she said, her eyes lighting at
the yellow bills in her lodger's hand, "and--oh, dear, yes, two weeks
is ample, Miss--Miss----"

"My cards are lost," said Miss Mary fretfully. "I can't think where I
left them. The man or somebody will know. Ask----"

She started to say, "Ask the doctor," for her memory was swallowed,
nearly, by sleepiness, and a curious woman would have had