Courcy's door,
and from motives of delicacy she did not ask which was he,--though she
felt a deep curiosity to know. Not that Miss De Courcy refrained from
mentioning him. On the contrary, she told heart-rending incidents of his
cruelty, as she tilted back and forth lazily in her rocking-chair, while
Druse sat by, spellbound, her thin hands clasped tightly over the work
in her lap, neglecting even the bon-bons that Miss De Courcy lavished
upon her.

One morning there was a cruel purple mark on the smooth dark skin of
Miss De Courcy's brow, and the round wrist was red and swollen. Druse's
eyes flashed as she saw them. "I expect I'm as wicked as a murderer,"
she said, "for I wish that brother of yours was dead. Yes, I do, 'n' I'd
like to kill him!" And the self-contained and usually stoical little
thing burst into passionate tears, and hid her face in Miss De Courcy's
lap.

A dark flush passed over that young lady's face, and something glittered
in the hard blue eyes. She drew Druse tight against her heart, as though
she would never let her go, and then she laughed nervously, trying to
soothe her. "There, there, it ain't anything. They're all brutes, but I
was ugly myself last night, 'n' made him mad. Tell me something about
the country, Druse, like you did the other day--anything. I don't care."

"Do you wish you was back there, too?" asked homesick Druse, wistfully.
Druse could no more take root in the city than could a partridge-berry
plant, set in the flinty earth of the back-yard.

"Wish I was back? Yes, if I could go back where I used to live," said
Miss De Courcy with her hoarse, abrupt little laugh. "No, I don't
either. Folks are pretty much all devils, city or country."

Druse shivered a little. She looked up with dumb pleading into the
reckless, beautiful face she had learned to love so well from her humble
tendings and ministerings. She had the nature to love where she served.
She had no words to say, but Miss De Courcy turned away from the
sorrowful, puzzled eyes of forget-me-not blue, the sole beauty of the
homely, irregular little face.

"I was only a-joking, Druse," she added, smiling. "Come, let's make some
lemonade."

But Druse did not forget these and other words. She pondered over them
as she lay in her stifling little dark bedroom at night, or attended to
her work by day, and she waged many an imaginary battle for the
beautiful, idle woman who represented the grace of life to her.

The fat ja