said--

"Although so many surround me,
I know not one I meet"--

or to creep the length of the cleanest side of the pavement in a
depressingly empty street, where the varying arrangement of the shabby
window curtains and the cards in the dingy windows, offering an endless
supply of rooms to the absent lodging hunter, furnished the sole
entertainment to the listless passer-by.

Annie had been afraid that she would miss Rose on her way to her
classes, and the fear was amply fulfilled--not the most distant glimpse
of Rose was forthcoming. Instead, at a crossing, Ella Carey, in her Aunt
Tyrrel's carriage, whirled by the pedestrian and administered a slight
spattering of mud to her dress. "It ought to have been the other way,"
said Annie bitterly to herself, while she stood still to wipe the sleeve
of her jacket. Yet she knew very well all the time that Ella's offence
had been quite involuntary, and that she had not for a moment recognized
Annie. If it had been so, Ella's round girlish face under its smart hat,
leaning back among the soft cushions not discontentedly, would have
brightened immensely. She would have stopped the carriage and been down
in the street at Annie's side in a moment, for the girl was as
warm-hearted as she had been docile. There was nothing she would have
liked better than to hail a Redcross face, and hear the last news about
Phyllis and May, and Ella's father and mother.

When Annie re-entered the hospital colder and more unrefreshed than she
had left it, she thought that she was at last going to be compensated
for life's rubs--beyond her deserts, she told herself a little
remorsefully. She had been longing all the morning for a letter from
Redcross, small reason as she had to complain of the negligence of her
correspondents there, and a letter with the Redcross post-mark was
awaiting her. She saw before she opened it that it was not from any of
her family. None of them used such creamily smooth and thick note-paper,
or exhibited such a cunningly contrived, elegantly designed monogram.
But even a slight communication from the merest acquaintance was welcome
as a flower in spring, when the acquaintance dwelt in dear old Redcross.
Annie had been thinking fondly of it all day as a place of human
well-being and geniality, free from continual sights and sounds of pain
and sorrow, where everybody got up and sat down, went out and came in,
worked and read, even dawdled and dreamt at will, sub