past six on Friday
evening Susanna ushered her into the shop.

Norah met her and presented her to Marion. "And now you are to come
upstairs to take off your things, for that always seems the sociable
way to begin," she said.

Miss Martin looked about her in surprise. "When you said you kept a
shop, I did not dream it was like this."

"We pride ourselves on not keeping an ordinary shop, but a most
unpretentious one, as you see."

"And this is where you live?" Miss Martin exclaimed with a sigh of
admiration, as she followed her guide into a very simple bedroom.

"We live all over the house. This is my room, however."

"It is the most beautiful place I ever saw," the girl said.

Remembering the dingy boarding-house, Norah understood. "It is all
simple and inexpensive," she said. "Miss Carpenter and I pride
ourselves on the large amount of comfort we have achieved for a small
amount of money. You see we have matting on the floor, with a few
rugs; as our landlord would not do anything to the walls, we had a
frieze made of this big-flowered paper which cost next to nothing, and
relieves the whiteness; the white iron beds and the dressing-tables
were not expensive, nor the draperies, which are in our line, you
know." While she talked Norah opened the door into the next room.
"This is Miss Carpenter's," she said. "We are just alike, except that
she is rose colored and I am blue."

There were some things Norah had not mentioned,--toilet articles such
as Miss Martin had never seen outside of a show-case, and a silk
dressing-gown of great daintiness that lay across a chair in Miss
Carpenter's room.

"I was surprised when you said you kept a store,--you did not look
like it; but if this is the way you live--" Miss Martin did not
finish her sentence as she allowed Norah to take her hat.

That everything about the small domain impressed her, it was easy to
see. The simple dinner served so deftly by Susanna, the appointments
of the table, and by no means least, her two hostesses.

Before eight o'clock the basket makers arrived, with them Madelaine,
who made a pretty pretence of being deeply grateful to Miss Pennington
for allowing her to come. Miss Martin watched her with serious
admiration in her eyes. Here was a girl little younger than herself,
whose whole business in life was to be beautiful and engaging.

"I have brought my prettiest valentine to show you," Madelaine said.
"Isn't it a dear?" and taking from its box