ngs and holidays till at last I began to get a foothold, and then
when I had enough to put by to risk it I went to Paris."

Her voice was as matter of fact as if she were describing a visit to
the family butcher shop. But I visualized the busy, plucky years with
their reward of Paris as if I had been a spectator of them.

"Of course, by the time I got there I was almost old enough to be the
mother, or, at least, the elder sister of most of the boys and girls
I met, and I had learned life and experience in a good, hard school.
Some of the youngsters got the habit of coming to me with all their
troubles, fancied or real. I made some stanch friends in those days,
but never a stancher, truer one than Dicky Graham.

"Tell me, dear girl, when you were teaching those history classes, did
any of your boy pupils fall in love with you?"

I answered her with an embarrassed little laugh. Her question called
up memories of shy glances, gifts of flowers and fruit, boyish
confidences--all the things which fall to the lot of any teacher of
boys.

"Well, then, you will understand me when I tell you that in the studio
days in Paris Dicky imagined himself quite in love with me."

There was something in her tone and manner which took all the sting
out of her words for me. All the jealousy and real concern which I had
spent on this old attachment of my husband for Mrs. Underwood vanished
as I listened to her. She might have been Dicky's mother, speaking of
his early and injudicious fondness for green apples.

"I shall always be proud of the way I managed Dicky that time." Her
voice still held the amused maternal note. "It's so easy for an older
woman to spoil a boy's life in a case like that if she's despicable
enough to do it. But, you see, I was genuinely fond of Dicky, and
yet not the least bit in love with him, and I was able, without his
guessing it, to keep the management of the affair in my own hands.
So when he woke up, as boys always do, to the absurdity of the idea,
there was nothing in his recollections of me to spoil our friendship.

"Then there came the early days of my struggle to get a foothold in
New York in my line. There were thousands of others like me. Six or
seven of the strugglers had been my friends in Paris. We formed a sort
of circle, "for offence and defence," Dicky called it; settled down
near each other, and for months we worked and played and starved
together. When one of us sold anything we all feasted