meditate upon the situation.

She could not write to the friends at home who had pictured such a
pleasant future for her with her Boston relatives. She was not able
even to go out and buy a "Dramatic Mirror" to discover where Nat's
company would be playing the coming week.

She lay white and slender in her black wrapper, and listlessly fingered
the telegram, which was now two days old. It read:--

"Do not leave Association till you hear from me. Important.
JOHN DUNHAM."

In the hopelessness of her thought her mental pictures of Dunham were
always mortifying. He had heard her belittled, had heard her father
slandered, had forced her to accept grudging charity, and yet the
sunshine of the smile with which he had bade her good-by, his
encouraging words and friendly handclasp, formed the only spot of cheer
in her wilderness. The telegram was a straw to which she clung when, in
the processes of dismal thought, waves seemed to go over her head.

What important matter could be coming to her? If it were only that he
intended returning, with apologies or propositions from her discarded
relations, she told herself with set lips that his errand would be
fruitless; but even while she took comfort in reiterating this
resolution, she was finding a ray of brightness in the idea that he
would be the messenger.

Her aunt's words often recurred to her. "Of course we knew you would
wish to get something to do."

In the precarious hand-to-mouth existence she had led with her father
since she was old enough to understand his visionary, happy-go-lucky
temperament, he had regarded her and taught her to regard herself as a
flower of the field. He had petted her, praised her beauty, and had
managed to pay their board spasmodically in first one, then another
locality; and being a good fellow who usually won the hearts of his
creditors, it was not until after his death that a multitude of small
claims came buzzing about his daughter's ears; and it was these as much
as anything which had made her accept with childlike insouciance the
arrangement of the friends who packed her away to her relatives with
all the celerity possible.

Her father's men friends had always admired and flattered her; she
supposed that men were all alike, and that she had but to throw her
lovely arms around Uncle Calvin's neck and tell him of her father's
misfortunes and petty debts to have all troubles smoothed away. She had
doubted a little how she should