tores, Brandon to offices and men's businesses, the Postoffice being
there. A handsome library building adorned Broadway, there were Orphan
Homes, an Old Ladies' Home, a Social Settlement.

Miss Armitage liked the aspect of it. Boarding at a hotel for awhile
she looked about and decided on Loraine place. The houses stood in a
row, but they had a pretty court yard in front, and a real stretch of
ground at the back for grass and flowers and two fine fruit trees.

Of course old friends sought her out. Perhaps the fortune helped. The
young girls of her time were matrons with growing children. How odd it
seemed! She thought sometimes that she felt reprehensibly young, as if
she was having girlhood over again in her heart, but it was a richer,
wiser and more fervent girlhood, with the added experiences of the
woman.

There were many things for her to take an interest in but they finally
settled around the babies and little children's hospital, and the
Settlement House. In a way, she was fond of the sweet, helpless babies
who seemed so very dependent on human kindness. If there was one of
her own flesh and blood it would take possession of her very soul, all
her thoughts, all her affection. But it should have been hers earlier
in life. Now she wanted companionship. She could not wait for it to
develop and then find unpleasant traits that had come from alien
blood. No, she could not adopt a baby and wait a dozen years to know
whether it would satisfy or not.

She had helped two or three girls to better things. One through the
last two years of High School and who was now teaching. And there had
been one with a charming voice and an attractive face who had been
injured in a mill and who would never have perfect use of her right
hand. If she could be trained for a singer!

She and Doctor Richards came to words about her. He said plainly she
would not be worth the money spent upon her. But Miss Armitage
insisted on spending it a year when the girl threw up her friend and
joined a concert troupe, slipping presently into vaudeville where she
_was_ a success.

And out of the dispute came a proffer of love and marriage. Alvah
Richards had begun life at the opposite pole from Miss Armitage. There
had been a fortune, a love for the study of medicine, a degree in
Vienna and one at Paris. Then most of the fortune had been swept away.
He returned to America and some way drifted to Newton. They were just
starting the hospital and he