a little noble!--and
that if she had not me to play with, she would probably marry and secure
her future.

The next evening I went to call on Lena. I found her propped up on the
couch in her bay window, with her foot in a big slipper. An awkward little
Russian girl whom she had taken into her work-room had dropped a flat-iron
on Lena's toe. On the table beside her there was a basket of early summer
flowers which the Pole had left after he heard of the accident. He always
managed to know what went on in Lena's apartment.

Lena was telling me some amusing piece of gossip about one of her clients,
when I interrupted her and picked up the flower basket.

"This old chap will be proposing to you some day, Lena."

"Oh, he has--often!" she murmured.

"What! After you've refused him?"

"He does n't mind that. It seems to cheer him to mention the subject. Old
men are like that, you know. It makes them feel important to think they're
in love with somebody."

"The Colonel would marry you in a minute. I hope you won't marry some old
fellow; not even a rich one."

Lena shifted her pillows and looked up at me in surprise. "Why, I'm not
going to marry anybody. Did n't you know that?"

"Nonsense, Lena. That's what girls say, but you know better. Every
handsome girl like you marries, of course."

She shook her head. "Not me."

"But why not? What makes you say that?" I persisted.

Lena laughed. "Well, it's mainly because I don't want a husband. Men are
all right for friends, but as soon as you marry them they turn into cranky
old fathers, even the wild ones. They begin to tell you what's sensible
and what's foolish, and want you to stick at home all the time. I prefer
to be foolish when I feel like it, and be accountable to nobody."

"But you'll be lonesome. You'll get tired of this sort of life, and you'll
want a family."

"Not me. I like to be lonesome. When I went to work for Mrs. Thomas I was
nineteen years old, and I had never slept a night in my life when there
were n't three in the bed. I never had a minute to myself except when I
was off with the cattle."

Usually, when Lena referred to her life in the country at all, she
dismissed it with a single remark, humorous or mildly cynical. But
to-night her mind seemed to dwell on those early years. She told me she
could n't remember a time when she was so little that she was n't lugging
a heavy baby about, helping to wash for babies, trying to keep their
little chapp