w-comer was tall and gaunt and thin; her shoulders sloped, she
stooped, her chin was up in the air, and she peered through spectacles.
Her hat was rusty, her india-rubber gossamer was rusty, the crape on her
dress was so very rusty that it seemed to be made of iron-filings. Her
cheeks were the color of unburned coffee-grains or of underdone
gingerbread; her nose was long; her eyes, were small and bleary; her
protruding lips wrinkled up as she spoke, and displayed her poor yellow
old tusks; her scant hair was dirty gray, her forehead was bald, her
neck was scraggy: she was particularly and pathetically ugly. Her dress
bagged about over her long waist and spidery arms. No wonder Mrs.
Tarbell shuddered.

"If I ain't disturbing you, Mrs. Tarbell," the visitor continued, "and
if you _could_ just spare the time to listen to me for a minnit, I
wanted just to ask you for a little advice. My name is Stiles,
ma'am,--Mrs. Annette Gorsley Stiles. Gorsley was my given name before I
was married--But I feel as if I was taking up your time, Mrs. Tarbell."

"Not at all," said Mrs. Tarbell hastily.

"Well, ma'am, my husband he's dead, been dead this six years now, and
left me with four to feed, and--well, I don't know just how to begin,
rightly. You see, it's this way. Celandine, my eldest,--that was _his_
name for her; he had a right pretty knack at names, and was always for
names that ran easy,--Celandine she's eighteen now, 'n' she wants to be
doing something for herself. It drives me real hard to pay for all four
of them out of a sewing-machine and the little I make selling candies
over a counter,--five cents' worth of chocolate drops and penny's-worths
of yellow taffy; never more than fifty cents a day, living where we do,
in Pulaski Street,--and Celandine she's bound to help me some way. The
next oldest to Celandine is on'y ten; and if I was to starve I wouldn't
have him to sell papers or black boots, and his father a foreman; and
the' ain't no call for office-boys nowadays, 'r else it's because
Augustus is so small for his age--"

"We have an office-boy," murmured Mrs. Tarbell.

"I know, ma'am," said Mrs. Stiles. "Leastways, I guessed as much. I was
thinking of asking you about Celandine." Mrs. Tarbell stirred uneasily,
and Mrs. Stiles hurried on: "Celandine and me we were talking things
over the other day,--we've been reading about you in the newspapers,
Mrs. Tarbell, nigh on to four years now; Celandine has always been a
co