called attention to it much more
loudly than Sophia had announced the larger conflagration. And in the
morning it was found that the Webster House was in ashes. All of Mrs.
Maybury's property was in the building. The insurance had run out the
week before, and meaning to attend to it every day she had let it go,
and here she was penniless.

But no one need commiserate with her. Instead of any terror at her
situation a wild joy sprang up within her. Relief and freedom clapped
their wings above her.

It was Mrs. Cairnes who felt that she herself needed pity. A lamp at
nights, oceans of fresh air careering round the house, the everlasting
canary-bird's singing to bear, her plants exiled, her table
revolutionized, her movements watched, her conversation restrained, her
cat abused, the board of two people and the wages of one to come out of
her narrow hoard. But she rose to the emergency. Sophia was penniless.
Sophia was homeless. The things which it was the ashes of bitterness to
allow her as a right, she could well give her as a benefactress. Sophia
was welcome to all she had. She went into the room, meaning to overwhelm
the weeping, helpless Sophia with her benevolence. Sophia was not there.

Mrs. Maybury came in some hours later, a carriage and a job-wagon
presently following her to the door. "You are very good, Julia," said
she, when Julia received her with the rapid sentences of welcome and
assurance that she had been accumulating. "And you mustn't think I'm not
sensible of all your kindness. I am. But my husband gave the institution
advice for nothing for forty years, and I think I have rights there now
without feeling under obligations to any. I've visited the directors,
and I've had a meeting called and attended,--I've had all your energy,
Julia, and have hurried things along in quite your own fashion. And as I
had just one hundred dollars in my purse after I sold my watch this
morning, I've paid it over for the entrance-fee, and I've been admitted
and am going to spend the rest of my days in the Old Ladies' Home. I've
the upper corner front room, and I hope you will come and see me there."

"Sophia!"

"Don't speak! Don't say one word! My mind was made up irrevocably when I
went out. Nothing you, nothing any one, can say, will change it. I'm one
of the old ladies now."

Mrs. Cairnes brought all her plants back into the parlor, pulled down
the shades, drew the inside curtain, had the cat's cushion again in its