d
seem very stupid to you. It would mean sitting still all day, you know,
with no one to talk to but Eleanor and me."

Jane looked wonderingly at the two women before her. No one but them to
talk to! She never had imagined an opportunity to talk to such people
at all. She supposed all such women regarded her as part of the scum of
the earth, yet here they were speaking pleasantly to her,--Mrs. Prency,
a woman who naturally would fill the eye of an impulsive animal like
Jane,--Eleanor, the belle of the town,--two women whom no one could
look at without admiration. No one but them to talk to! All her
associates faded from Jane's mind like a fleck of mist under a
sunburst, as she answered,--

"If there's anything you want done that I can do, Mrs. Prency, I'd
rather work for you for nothin' than for anybody else for any money."

"Come to my house as soon as you like, then, and we'll promise to keep
you busy: won't we, daughter?"

"Yes, indeed," murmured Eleanor, who saw, in her mind's eye, a great
deal of her work being done without effort of her own.

"You sha'n't do it for nothing, however; you shall earn fully as much
as you do now. Good day," Mrs. Prency said, as she passed on, and
Eleanor gave Jane a nod and a smile.

The hotel drudge stood still and looked after the couple with wondering
eyes. The judge's wife dropped something as she walked. Jane hurried
after her and picked it up. It was a glove. The girl pressed it to her
lips again and again, hurried along for a few steps to return it,
stopped suddenly, thrust it into her breast, and then, passing the back
of her ungloved hand across her eyes, returned to the hotel, her eyes
cast down and her ears deaf to occasional remarks intended specially
for them.

CHAPTER XII.

Deacon Quickset was entirely truthful when he said to the keeper of the
beer saloon that he had worried his pastor again and again to call on
the repentant thief and try to bring him into the fold of the church;
but he probably did not know that the said pastor had opinions of his
own as to the time and manner in which such work should be done. Dr.
Guide, under whose spiritual ministrations the deacon had sat every
Sunday for many years, was a man of large experience in church work of
all kinds, and, although he was extremely orthodox, to the extent of
believing that those who already had united with his church were on the
proper road to heaven, he nevertheless realized, as a practic