d near the Hospital for Dora, who was to stay in town
and look out for a situation; and for the next week, a week of hot
summer weather, Annie, relieved from her hospital work, because it was
her first holiday time, went to and fro, spending as little as possible
on omnibus fares, with Dora and May in her train, in search of
employment for them. People were beginning to leave town, and the time
did not seem propitious. When was it ever propitious for such a pursuit
where women are concerned? Even under Annie's able guidance, with the
spirit which she could summon to her aid in all difficulties, the
intentional and unintentional rebuffs which the two girl candidates,
particularly Dora, got from agents and principals in connection with
ladies in want of useful companions and nursery-governesses were
innumerable. The swarms of needy, greedy applicants for similar
situations whom the Millars were perpetually encountering in their
rounds, were enough to cause the stoutest heart to quail, and to sink
the most sanguine nature into the depths of despondency.

Dora Millar was not constitutionally sanguine, and she grew more and
more nervous and dispirited as the fruitless efforts went on. Her little
figure drooped, her eyes had a dejected expression, her lips quivered
pathetically without any provocation. Annie was compelled to use strong
language. "The idiots!" she exclaimed, _apropos_ of the last persons who
had found Dora too young or too old, not strong enough looking, or not
lively enough looking ("not as if she could stand a large amount of
bullying and worrying," Annie read between the lines). "What a chance
they are letting slip through their fingers of getting the most
unexacting, contented creature in the world to minister to their
tiresome wants. They will never see her like again; serve them right for
their blindness."

One particularly glaring, airless afternoon, the three sisters were
toiling back to Dora's lodging, with the London pavement like heated
iron under the feet of the crowds that trod it, and the cloudless sky,
in which the sun blazed a ball of fire, like glowing brass over their
heads. Then as the Millars turned a corner and looked longingly at the
trees in a square with their leaves already yellowing and shrivelling,
May uttered a little shriek of delight and darted forward to greet a
familiar figure and face in the stream of strangers. What did it signify
that the figure was insignificant by comparis