it; never any less, or you would
have bad arrears. As there are exactly two hundred and thirteen pages,
she calculated that she would finish it in ten weeks and a day. There was
no place for Miss Quincey and her pile of marble-backed exercise-books in
the dim and dingy first-floor drawing-room (Mrs. Moon and the
bandy-legged cabinet would have had something to say to that). All this
terrific intellectual travail went on in a dimmer and dingier dining-room
beneath it.

Then one night, old Martha, disturbed by sounds that came from Miss
Juliana's bedroom, groped her way fumblingly in and found Miss Juliana
sitting up in her sleep and posing the darkness with a problem.

"If," said Miss Juliana, "three men can finish one hundred and nineteen
hogsheads of Browning in eight weeks, how long will it take seven women
to finish a thousand and forty-five--forty-five--forty-five, if one woman
works twice as hard as eleven men?"

Martha shook her head and went fumbling back to bed again; and being a
conscientious servant she said nothing about it for fear of frightening
the old lady.

About a fortnight later, Rhoda Vivian, sailing down the corridor, came
upon the little arithmetic teacher all sick and tremulous, leaning up
against the hot-water pipes beside a pile of exercise-books. The sweat
streamed from her sallow forehead, and her face was white and drawn. She
could give no rational account of herself, but offered two hypotheses as
equally satisfactory; either she had taken a bad chill, or else the hot
air from the water-pipes had turned her faint. Rhoda picked up the pile
of exercise-books and led her into the dressing-room, and Miss Quincey
was docile and ridiculously grateful. She was glad that Miss Vivian was
going to take her home. She even smiled her little pinched smile and
pressed Rhoda's hand as she said, "A friend in need is a friend indeed."
Rhoda would have given anything to be able to return the pressure and the
sentiment, but Rhoda was too desperately sincere. She was sorry for Miss
Quincey; but all her youth, unfettered and unfeeling, revolted from the
bond of friendship. So she only stooped and laced up the shabby boots,
and fastened the thin cape by its solitary button. The touch of Miss
Quincey's clothes thrilled her with a pang of pity, and she could have
wept over the unutterable pathos of her hat. In form and substance it was
a rock, beaten by the weather; its limp ribbons clung to it like seaweed
washe