er life, but for all that, Michel, the quarter grocer at the corner,
and Mme. Laurent, who kept the rabbe shop opposite, had fixed it all up
between them, of her sad history and past glories. Not that they knew,
but then Michel must invent something when the neighbors came to him,
their fountain head of wisdom.

One morning little Miss Sophie opened wide her dingy windows to catch
the early freshness of the autumn wind as it whistled through the
yellow-leafed trees. It was one of those calm, blue-misted, balmy,
November days that New Orleans can have when all the rest of the country
is fur-wrapped. Miss Sophie pulled her machine to the window, where the
sweet, damp wind could whisk among her black locks.

Whirr, whirr, went the machine, ticking fast and lightly over the belts
of the rough jean pants. Whirr, whirr, yes, and Miss Sophie was actually
humming a tune! She felt strangely light to-day.

"_Ma foi_," muttered Michel, strolling across the street to where Mme.
Laurent sat sewing behind the counter on blue and brown-checked aprons,
"but the little ma'amselle sings. Perhaps she recollects."

"Perhaps," muttered the rabbe woman.

But little Miss Sophie felt restless. A strange impulse seemed drawing
her up town, and the machine seemed to run slow, slow, before it would
stitch the endless number of jean belts. Her fingers trembled with
nervous haste as she pinned up the unwieldy black bundle of the finished
work, and her feet fairly tripped over each other in their eagerness to
get to Claiborne Street, where she could board the up-town car. There
was a feverish desire to go somewhere, a sense of elation,--foolish
happiness that brought a faint echo of color into her pinched cheeks.
She wondered why.

No one noticed her in the car. Passengers on the Claiborne line are too
much accustomed to frail, little black-robed women with big, black
bundles; it is one of the city's most pitiful sights. She leaned her
head out of the window to catch a glimpse of the oleanders on Bayou
Road, when her attention was caught by a conversation in the car.

"Yes, it's too bad for Neale, and lately married too," said the elder
man, "I can't see what he is to do."

Neale! she pricked up her ears. That was the name of the groom in the
Jesuit church.

"How did it happen?" languidly inquired the younger. He was a stranger,
evidently; a stranger with a high regard for the faultlessness of male
attire, too.

"Well, the firm failed fi