and the woman
on her left. Too much confused to remember anything distinctly, Adah
forgot Jim's injunction; forgot that Pamelia was to arrange it somehow;
forgot everything, except that Mrs. Richards was waiting for her to
speak. An ominous cough from Eudora decided her, and then it came out,
her reason for being there. She had seen Miss Anna's advertisement, she
wanted a place, and she had come so far to get it; had left a happy home
that she might not be dependent but earn, her bread for herself and her
little boy, for Willie. Would they take her message to Anna? Would they
let her stay?

"You say you left a happy home," and the thin, sneering lips of Eudora
were pressed so tightly together that the words could scarcely find
egress. "May I ask, if it was so happy, why you left it?"

There was a flush on Adah's cheek as she replied, "Because it was a home
granted at first from charity. It was not mine. The people were poor,
and I would not longer be a burden to them."

"And your husband--where is he?"

This was the hardest question of all, and Adah's distress was visible as
she replied, "I will be frank with you. Willie's father left me, and I
don't know where he is."

An incredulous, provoking smile flitted over Eudora's face as she
returned, "We hardly care to have a deserted wife in our family--it
might be unpleasant."

"Yes," and the old lady took up the argument, "Anna is well enough
without a maid. I don't know why she put that foolish advertisement in
the paper, in answer, I believe, to one equally foolish which she saw
about 'an unfortunate woman with a child.'"

"I am that woman. I wrote that advertisement when my heart was heavier
than it is now, and God took care of it. He pointed it out to Miss Anna.
He caused her to answer it. He sent me here, and you will let me see
her. Think if it were your own daughter, pleading thus with some one."

"That is impossible. Neither my daughter, nor my daughter-in-law, if I
had one, could ever come to a servant's position," Mrs. Richards
replied, not harshly, for there was something in Adah's manner and in
Adah's eyes which rode down her resentful pride; and she might have
yielded, but for Eudora, whose hands had so ached to shake the little
child, now innocently picking at a bud.

How she did long to box his ears, and while her mother talked, she had
taken a step forward more than once, but stopped as often, held in check
by the little face and soft blue eyes,