nitress sometimes stopped to gossip a moment with Druse.

"Ever seen Miss De Courcy on your floor?" she asked, one day, curiously.

"Yes, ma'am, I--I've seen her," replied Druse, truthfully, the color
rising to her pale cheeks.

"O Lord!" ejaculated the janitress, heaving a portentous sigh from the
depths of her capacious, brown calico-covered bosom, "if I was the owner
of these here flats, instead of the old miser that's got 'em, wouldn't I
have a clearin' out! Wouldn't I root the vice and wickedness out of some
of 'em! Old Lowder don't care what he gits in here, so long's they pay
their rent!"

Druse did not reply. She felt sure that the janitress meant Miss De
Courcy's drunken brother, and she was very glad that "old Lowder" was
not so particular, for she shuddered to think how lonely she should be
were it not for the back flat to the right. Even the janitress, who
seemed so kind, was heartless to Miss De Courcy because she had a
drunken brother!

Druse began to find the world very, very cruel. The days went on, and
the two lives, so radically unlike, grew closer entwined. Druse lost
none of her stern, angular little ways. She did not learn to lounge, or
to desire fine clothing. If either changed, an observer, had there been
one, might have noticed that Miss De Courcy did not need as much
medicine as formerly, that the hard ring of her laugh was softened when
Druse went by, and that never an oath--and we have heard that ladies of
the highest rank have been known to swear under strong
provocation--escaped the full red lips in Druse's presence.

One morning Druse went about the household duties with aching limbs and
a dizzy head. For the first since she had acted as her uncle's
housekeeper, she looked hopelessly at the kitchen floor, and left it
unscrubbed: it was sweeping day, too, but the little rooms were left
unswept, and she lay all the morning in her dark bedroom, in increasing
dizziness and pain. For some days she had been languid and
indisposed, and now real illness overcame her; her head was burning, and
vague fears of sickness assaulted her, and a dread of the loneliness of
the black little room. She dragged herself down the hall. Miss De Courcy
opened the door. Her own eyes were red and swollen as with unshed tears.
She pulled Druse in impetuously.

"I'm so glad you're come. I--Why, child, what is the matter with you?
What ails you, Druse?"

She took Druse's hot little hand in her's and led her to t