ng temperament
was almost sure to drift sooner or later if his probationary period of
strangerhood happened to fall in this section of the city.

The clever Miss Jamison put a sign bearing the legend, "All People's,"
on each of the doors of six houses, opposite the church, which she
acquired one by one as her business increased. The homeless and lonely
who came to All People's for spiritual refreshment, or to gratify their
curiosity, remained to patronize Miss Jamison's "special Sunday"
thirty-five-cent table d'hote, served in the basement of one house; or
bought a meal-ticket for four dollars, which entitled them to twenty-one
meals served in the basement of another of the houses; or for the sum of
five dollars and upward insured themselves the privilege of a week's
lodging and three meals a day served in still another of the basements.

Such is the history of Miss Jamison as detailed at the breakfast-table
that Sunday morning.

I went out for a walk late in the afternoon, and wandered about,
homesick and lonely. When I returned dinner was over and the dining-room
almost deserted, only a few remaining to gossip over their dessert and
coffee. At my table all had gone save the young girl with the dark eyes,
who, I felt instinctively, was a very nice and agreeable girl. As I
approached the table, she raised her eyes from the book she was reading
and gave me a diffident little bow, when, seeing I was so glad to
respond to it, she immediately smiled in a friendly way.

From the glimpse I had caught of her during the morning meal, I had
thought her very pretty in a smart, stiffly starched, mannish-looking
shirt-waist. That night she looked even prettier, clad in a
close-fitting cloth gown of dark wine-color. I noticed, too, as I sat
down beside her, that she was an unusually big woman.

"How do you like the boarding-house by this time?" she asked, with an
encouraging smile, to which I responded as approvingly as I could in the
remembrance of the cheerless hall bedroom far above, and in the
presence of the unappetizing dinner spread before me.

"Well, I think it's rotten, if you'll excuse my French," laughed Miss
Plympton, as she cut a square of butter off the common dish and passed
it to me. "And I guess you think so, too, only you're too polite to
roast the grub like the rest of us do. But you'll get over that in time.
I was just the same way when I first begun living in boarding-houses,
but I've got bravely over that