hat she had barely sufficed for her needs. She showed
what race and what pride she had when she bade Antony good-bye, standing
under the jasmine vine. She never wore any other dress than a loose
morning robe of a white or a soft mauve material. Standing there, with a
smile of serene beauty, she waved her handkerchief to him as she saw him
go limping down the walk from the garden to the street and put of sight.
True to her type then, she fainted dead away, and Emmeline and Mammy
brought her to.

* * * * *

He thought of things in Miss Whitcomb's front room. There was nothing
fairylike about the red-brick dwelling, although at the corner of the
New York Avenue these two stories seemed diminutive and out of place. He
made with the timid maiden ladies his own timid arrangement. He was so
poor and they were so poor that the transaction was timorous--Antony on
his part was afraid that they might not take him in, they, on theirs,
were terrified lest the lodger would not come in. When at length they
left him alone, his first feeling was gratitude for a room of any kind
that represented shelter from the Northern cold, but when he had
divested himself of his coat, he realized that the little unheated room
was as cold as the outside. A meagre bed, a meagre bureau and washstand,
two unwelcoming chairs, these few inanimate objects were shut in with
Antony, and unattractive as they were, they were appealing in their
scant ugliness. Before the window slight white curtains hung, the same
colour as the snow without. They hung like little shrouds. Around the
windows of his Southern home the vine had laid its beauty, and the
furnishings had been comfortable and tasteful. The homelessness of this
interior, to the young man who had never passed a night from under his
own roof, struck with a chill, and he thought of the sitting-room in the
vast house of his kinsmen not a block away. His kinspeople had not even
asked him to break bread. Dressed as he was, he lay down exhausted on
his bed, and when a knock came and Miss Whitcomb's voice invited him to
supper, Fairfax sprang up and answered as out of a dream.

CHAPTER V

His fortune of twenty-five dollars he divided into five equal packets.
His weekly bill with the old ladies, to whom his aunt had begged Antony
to go _in charity_, was to be six dollars. There would of course be
extras, car-fare and so forth. With economy--it would last. Antony saw
ever