to four. You are in no sense maid or companion. You
live where you think best, are entirely independent, quite free, the
mistress of your own affairs. I am a busy woman. The demands upon my
time are such that I require a secretary who can do more than add
columns of figures, though that she must do too. She must in many cases
be my brains, my tact, convey in my correspondence fine shades of
feeling. It is a position requiring peculiar talent, Miss Vars, and one,
I should say, which would be attractive to you. During the protracted
absence of an only son of mine, who is occupying my London house, I
shall be alone in my home this winter. You may have until this evening
to think over your answer. Don't give it to me now. It is better form,
as well as better judgment, never to be hasty. I liked your letters,"
she smiled graciously upon me now. "After this interview I like them
still. I like _you_. I think we would get on."

A hundred and twenty-five dollars a month! The still unmarried Breck
safe in England! My almost empty trunk! Why not? Why not accept the
position? Was I not free from fear of what people would say? Had I not
already broken the confining chains of "what's done," and "what isn't
done?" I needed the work; it was respectable; Breck was in England; a
hundred and twenty-five dollars a month; my trunk almost empty.

"Well," I said, "I need a position as badly as you seem to need a
secretary, Mrs. Sewall. We might try each other anyway. I'll think it
over. I won't decide now. I will let you know by five o'clock this
afternoon."

I accepted the position. Mrs. Plummet shed real tears when I told her my
good news at six o'clock that night; and more tears a fortnight later
when I moved out of my little hall bedroom, and my feather-weight trunk,
lightsomely balanced on the shoulders of one man, was conveyed to the
express-wagon and thence to new lodgings in Irving Place.

It was in the new lodgings that my new life really began. Its birth had
been difficult, the pains I had endured for its existence sharp and
recurring, but here it was at last--a lovely, interesting thing. I could
observe it almost as if it was something I could hold in my two hands.
Here it was--mine, to watch grow and develop; mine to tend and nurture
and persuade; my life at last, to do with as I pleased.

At the suffrage headquarters I had run across a drab-appearing girl by
the name of Esther Claff, and it was with her that I shared the roo