now.

"I've been here just a little over a week myself," she went on in her
frank and engaging manner. "I saw you this morning, and I just knew how
you felt. I thought I'd die of homesickness when I came. Not a soul
spoke to me for four days. Not that anybody would want to particularly
get acquainted with these cattle, only I'm one of the sort that has got
to have somebody to speak to. So this morning I said to myself, when I
saw you, that I'd put on nerve and up and speak to you even if you did
turn me down. And that's why I waited for you to-night."

I responded that I was glad she had been so informal; absence of
formality being the meaning I interpreted from her slang, which was much
more up-to-date and much more vigorous than that to which I had been
accustomed in the speech of a small country village. As I ate, we
talked. We talked a little about a great many things in which we were
not at all interested, and a very great deal about ourselves and the
hazards of fortune which had brought our lives together and crossed them
thus at Miss Jamison's supper-table,--subjects into which we entered
with all the zest and happy egotism of youth. Of this egotism I had the
greater preponderance, probably because of my three or four years' less
experience of life. Before we rose from the table I had told Miss
Plympton the story of my life as it had been lived thus far.

Of her own story, all I knew was that she was a Westerner, that she had
worked a while in Chicago, and had come to New York on a mission similar
to my own--to look for a job. We went together to her room, which was as
small and shabby as my own, and a few minutes later we were sitting
round the little Jenny Lind stove, listening to the pleasant crackle of
the freshly kindled fire. Both were silent for a few minutes. Then my
new friend spoke.

"What does that put you in mind of?" she asked slowly.

"You mean the crackle of the kindling-wood and the snap of the coal as
the flames begin to lick it?" I asked.

"U-m-m, yes; the crackle of the wood and the snap of the coal," said the
girl in a dreamy tone.

"Home!" I cried, quick as a flash. "It makes me think of home--of the
home I used to have," and my eyes blurred.

"Here, too! Home!" she replied softly. "Funny, isn't it, that we have so
many ideas exactly alike? But I suppose that's because we were both
brought up in the country."

"In the country!" I exclaimed in surprise. "I thought you were from
Chi