ng these girls--with all their talk of
their friends and their--sisters,--and their questions about you."

"Tell 'em to dry up," said Jack indignantly. "Take 'em to the cake shop
and load 'em up with candy and ice cream. That'll stop their mouths.
You've got money, you got my last remittance, didn't you?" he repeated
quickly. "If you didn't, here's"--his hand was already in his pocket
when she stopped him with a despairing gesture.

"Yes, yes, I got it all. I haven't touched it. I don't want it. For I
can't live on you. Don't you understand,--I want to work. Listen,--I can
draw and paint. Madame Bance says I do it well; my drawing-master says
I might in time take portraits and get paid for it. And even now I can
retouch photographs and make colored miniatures from them. And," she
stopped and glanced at Jack half-timidly, "I've--done some already."

A glow of surprised relief suffused the gambler. Not so much at this
astonishing revelation as at the change it seemed to effect in her. Her
pale blue eyes, made paler by tears, cleared and brightened under
their swollen lids like wiped steel; the lines of her depressed mouth
straightened and became firm. Her voice had lost its hopeless monotone.

"There's a shop in the next street,--a photographer's,--where they
have one of mine in their windows," she went on, reassured by Jack's
unaffected interest. "It's only round the corner, if you care to see."

Jack assented; a few paces farther brought them to the corner of a
narrow street, where they presently turned into a broader thoroughfare
and stopped before the window of a photographer. Sophy pointed to an
oval frame, containing a portrait painted on porcelain. Mr. Hamlin was
startled. Inexperienced as he was, a certain artistic inclination
told him it was good, although it is to be feared he would have been
astonished even if it had been worse. The mere fact that this headstrong
country girl, who had run away with a cur like Stratton, should be able
to do anything else took him by surprise.

"I got ten dollars for that," she said hesitatingly, "and I could have
got more for a larger one, but I had to do that in my room, during
recreation hours. If I had more time and a place where I could
work"--she stopped timidly and looked tentatively at Jack. But he was
already indulging in a characteristically reckless idea of coming back
after he had left Sophy, buying the miniature at an extravagant price,
and ordering half a dozen