THE WYNDHAM GIRLS

"TOM HAD CAMPED OUT, AND HE INSISTED ON COOKING THE STEAK."

THE
WYNDHAM GIRLS

BY

MARION AMES TAGGART
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
BY C. M. RELYEA

NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
1902

Copyright, 1901, 1902, by
The Century Co.

—
Published October, 1902

THE DEVINNE PRESS

TO
CAROLYN WELLS

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

THE WYNDHAM GIRLS

CHAPTER I
"POOR HUMPTY DUMPTY!"

"NO pink for me, please; I want that beautiful shimmering green, made up over shining white silk. It will make my glossy brown eyes and hair look like a ripe chestnut among its green leaves."

"Oh, Bab, such a glistening sentence! 'Shimmering green,' 'shining white,' 'glossy hair'—you didn't mean glossy eyes, I hope! Besides, chestnuts don't show among green leaves; they stay in their burs till they drop off the tree."

"Now, Phyllis, what is the use of spoiling a poetical metaphor—figure—what do you call it? Which do you like best? Have you made up your mind, Jessamy?"

"I want all white; probably this mousseline de soie."

"I'm rather inclined to the pearl, yet the violet is lovely."

"You both 'know your effects,' as that conceited little novelist said last night," cried Barbara. "Jessamy's a dream in white, and Phyl looks too sweet for mortal uses in anything demure."

The soft May wind from the distant river blew the lace curtains gently to and fro, and lifted the squares of delicate fabrics scattered over the couch on which the three young girls were sitting. Jessamy, the elder of the two Wyndham sisters, was at eighteen very beautiful, with dainty elegance of motion, refinement of speech, almost stately grace, unusual to her age and generation.

Barbara, a year younger, was her opposite. Life, energy, fun were declared in every quick turn of her head and hands; small in figure, with sparkling dark eyes, and a saucy tilt of nose and chin, she could hardly have contrasted more sharply with her tall, gray-eyed, delicately tinted sister, and with what Bab herself called "Jessamy's Undine ways."

The third girl, Phyllis, was twin in age to Jessamy, but unlike either of the others in appearance and temperament. She was in reality their cousin, the one child of their father's only brother, but, as she had been brought up with them since her fourth year, Jessamy and Barbara knew no lesser kinship to her than to each other.

At first glance Phyllis was not pretty; to those who had known her for even a brief time she was beautiful. Sweetness, unselfishness, content shone out from her dark-blue eyes, with the large pupils and long, dark lashes. Her lips rested together with the suggestion of a smile in their corners, and the clear pallor of her complexion was shaded by her masses of dark-brown hair, which warmed into red tints under the sunlight.

Across the room from her daughters and niece, enjoying the girls' happiness as she always did, sat Mrs. Wyndham, rocking slowly.

She was a fragile woman, still clad in the mourning she had worn for her husband for seven years,—a sweet and gentle creature, who, one felt at once, had been properly placed by Providence in luxury, and fortunately shielded from hardship; for the Wyndhams were wealthy. The morning-room in the great house on Murray Hill showed evidence of being the spot where the family gathered informally for rest and recreation; it made no attempt at special beauty, still it was full of countless little objects which declared the long custom of all its inmates of purchasing whatever struck their fancy, regardless of its cost or subsequent usefulness.

The three young girls, differing in many ways, were alike in bearing the stamp of having spent their short lives among luxurious surroundings, shielded from the cradle against the sharp buffets of common experience.

Even the samples fluttering under their fingers and the touch of the spring wind bore the name of a French artist on Fifth Avenue whose skill only the highly favored could command, and the consultation under way was for the selection for each young girl of gowns fit for a princess's wearing, yet intended for the use of maidens not yet "out," in the hops at the hotel at Bar Harbor in the coming summer.

"Madrina, do you care which we choose?" asked Bab, jumping up in a shower of samples which flew in all directions at her sudden movement, and running over to hug her pale mother. Jessamy said Bab was "subject to irruptions of affection."

"Not in the least; the samples are all bewilderingly pretty. I only ask to have a voice in selecting the style of the gown. Madame Alouette and I sometimes differ as to what is suitable," replied Mrs. Wyndham, when she had caught her breath.

"Do you remember the elaborate lace she used on Jessamy's dimity last year, auntie?" laughed Phyllis, on her knees collecting the samples Bab had scattered.

Jessamy rose slowly, gently putting together the bits of soap-bubble-tinted gauzes on her knee; her fingers stroked them reluctantly, as if unwilling to part from them. "I am afraid I am dreadfully vain," she said, "though I hope I am only artistic. I am not sure whether I love exquisite things for their own sake or because I want them for myself, but these lovely fabrics go to my very heart. I hate cheapness to an extent that I am ashamed of, and I certainly always have an instinct for the most expensive articles in the shops, though I never think of the price."

"I am sure it is because you're artistic, Amy," said Phyllis, coming up flushed from under an arm-chair. "You do like fine things for yourself, but it's just as you want only good pictures in your room. You crave beauty, and you're born royal in taste. If we were all beggared, Bab and I could get on; for while I love beauty too, it's not with your love for it. Besides, I could be happy in a tenement if we were together, and Bab would revel in a sunbonnet and driving the cows home. But you're a princess, and you can't be anything else: noblesse oblige, you know, means, in your case, 'obliged to be noble.'"

THE WYNDHAM GIRLS.

"You're a bad Phyl, whose object in life is to ruin people by making them perfectly self-satisfied," said Jessamy. "I only hope some of the excuses you find for me are true. I'm as luxurious in nature as a cat. I know that. Come to the window; I want to see this old rose in the sunlight."

Bab stopped swinging her feet, and slipped from the arm of her mother's chair, where she had been perching, to follow them. "Don't you abuse cats, nor my sister Jessamy, miss," she said, putting her arm around slender Jessamy and peering over her shoulder at the sample of old-rose silk, while she rubbed Jessamy's arm with her chin like an affectionate dog. "They're two as nice things as I know. Madrina, I see Mr. Hurd coming across the street; he's headed this way."

"Oh, dear!" sighed Mrs. Wyndham, almost fretfully; "I suppose he is coming to talk business again. He has been tormenting me all winter to withdraw my money from the corporation; you know, he thinks it isn't secure. I am sure I cannot see why—do you, Jessamy and Phyllis? You are as good business women as I am. Don't leave me when he comes to-day; I should like to have you hear his arguments. Young as you are, you can understand quite as well as I do. He says I ought to sell my stock, or enough to secure us against misfortune, but I cannot get as high interest elsewhere, and it is safe."

"He—you said Mr. Hurd thinks it isn't safe, didn't you, mama?" asked Jessamy, turning from the window.

"But that is ridiculous! Your poor father's partner is at the helm, and your father always said he was both clever and unimpeachable; he trusted him like himself," said Mrs. Wyndham. "It is all because they won't show the books lately—as though I wanted to see the books, or minded if Mr. Hurd did not, as long as Mr. Abbott is managing! I cannot see why Mr. Hurd is so nervous; he has talked hours to me since last fall, and yet I don't see. I will not put our stock on the market—in the market—what is the right word?—and shake public confidence, flood the market—inflate it—oh, I cannot remember terms! And Mr. Abbott wrote me, and came especially to see me in March to say that would be the effect of my offering my bonds or stock now. I understand him much better than Mr. Hurd; he is more patient, and won't leave his point until I have mastered it. He said industrial stock was different from—from—the other kind. He said one must not bear the market on one's own stock, but must bull it. That means, in their queer terms, not depress it, but force things upward, which is, of course, what one would want to do with one's own values. You stay in the room to-day, children, and see if you understand. Mr. Hurd insists I am risking beggaring you, and that distresses me unspeakably."

"Don't mind Mr. Hurd, Madrina; he's an anxious attorney, that's all," said Barbara, with an air of lucidity.

"But one has to heed one's attorney, daughter," said her mother, half smiling. "Only I can't turn my back on my dear husband's business, which he brought to such splendid success, and sell out Wyndham Iron Company stock as if we weren't Wyndhams, but outsiders."

"Mr. Hurd, ma'am," said Violet, the black maid, extending a card in one hand, while the other twisted her apron-string nervously; she had caught alarm from a glance at the visitor's face.

"Bring him here, Violet. Mr. Hurd will pardon feminine confusion," Mrs. Wyndham added, rising and pointing to the samples on the couch with her extended hand, for the lawyer had followed the maid without delay. "We are pluming, or more properly donning, our feathers for flight, Mr. Hurd."

"Yes, yes," said the little man, shaking hands, without looking at Mrs. Wyndham. "Good morning, Miss Jessamy; good morning, Phyllis; how do you do, little Barbara? May I interrupt your—Gracious powers! dear madam, I mean I must interrupt your plans, Mrs. Wyndham."

Jessamy and Phyllis clutched each other with sudden pallor; the little lawyer's voice shook with emotion. Bab flushed and ran to her mother, putting her arms around her frail figure as though to place herself as a bulwark between her and ill.

"You will not interrupt anything more important than the selection of dancing-gowns for the children," said Mrs. Wyndham, with her soft dignity, though she turned a little paler. "Is there any special reason for your visit—kind visit always—Mr. Hurd? And may the girls hear what you have to say, since their interests are at stake?"

"Special reason, madam? Special, indeed! God help me, I don't know how to say what I have to say, but I prefer the young ladies to hear it. You remember, I have urged their presence at our previous conferences, but you considered them too young to be troubled—Poor chicks!" he added suddenly.

"Evidently you feel that you have something unpleasant to tell me, Mr. Hurd; but I feel sure you exaggerate; you know, you are always more timid and pessimistic than I," said Mrs. Wyndham, dropping into the nearest chair and trying to smile.

"Good heavens, Mrs. Wyndham! It isn't a matter for self-gratulation. If I could have made you listen to me six—even two—months ago, I should not be here to-day, the bearer of such dreadful news," burst out the lawyer, impatiently.

"Wouldn't it be better, Mr. Hurd, to tell us quickly? You frighten us with hints," said Jessamy, in her silvery, even voice; but the poor child's lips were white.

Mr. Hurd glanced at Jessamy. "Yes," he said; "but it is not easy. I heard the definite news last night in Wall Street; rumors had been afloat for days. I wanted to give you one more night of untroubled sleep. It will be in the papers this evening."

"What will, Mr. Hurd?" burst out Barbara, impatiently.

"The failure of the Wyndham Iron Company."

There was dead silence in the room, broken only by the low-toned little French clock striking ten times.

"The company—failed?" whispered Mrs. Wyndham, trying to find her voice.

"What does that mean, Mr. Hurd?" asked Phyllis.

"It means that your mother's bonds and stocks are valueless; and as she holds everything in her own right and has kept all that your father left in the business, it means that your inheritance has been wiped out of existence," said the lawyer, not discriminating between the daughters and the niece in his excitement.

"How can it be—total ruin?" asked poor Mrs. Wyndham. "Henry gone but seven years, and such a splendid success as he left the company! How can it have failed? I don't believe it!" she cried, starting to her feet with sudden strength.

"Dear Mrs. Wyndham, it is too certain," said her husband's old friend and attorney, gently. "When they refused to open up the books for inspection, and you would not authorize me to take steps to compel them to do so, I knew this would come."

"Mr. Abbott—" began Mrs. Wyndham.

"Mr. Abbott is an outrageous villain," interrupted Mr. Hurd, passionately. "I have lain awake all night cursing him, or I could not mention him before you without swearing. He has got control of the corporation by holding the majority of stock, and he has run the thing on a speculative basis instead of a solid business one. At the same time, justice to his business capacity compels me to add that he has kept himself clear of possible failure, using the stockholders' funds and not his own for his operations, so that though you and others are ruined, he is safe. I shall never be able to make you understand the case more fully; but that is the sum of it, and he's a consummate rogue."

"But Henry trusted him—" essayed Mrs. Wyndham once more.

"Henry Wyndham was an honest man, and a good friend. He is not the first who has been deceived in his estimate of a man. That is all to be said on that score," said the little lawyer, grimly.

"I never knew any one who was ruined, outside of books," said Jessamy, trying to smile. "What does it mean? Going to live in an East-side tenement, and working in a sweat-shop?"

"Nonsense, Jessamy!" said her mother, sharply, drying her tears, which had been softly falling, while Bab burst into wailing at the picture. "Nonsense! I shall sell some stock, and I am sure that we shall get on very well—perhaps economizing somewhat."

"Dear madam, you no more grasp the situation than you saw it coming," said Mr. Hurd, struggling between annoyance and pity. "Your preferred stock might bring five cents, and the common stock three, but I doubt it; their value is wiped out. Practically, you have no stock. Still, I hope the situation will not be as grave as Miss Jessamy pictures. You will have an income greater than enough to give you comfort, though by comparison you will be poor. You cannot stay in this house, for it alone, and its contents, must furnish your income. But it will rent or sell at a figure to insure you six to eight thousand a year; and if you sell your pictures and some of the furniture you will have a very respectable principal to live upon. Bad as it is, your case might be far worse."

"Do you mean that this house will be the sole—actually the sole—source of income left me?" gasped Mrs. Wyndham, with more agitation than she had yet shown.

Mr. Hurd nodded. The poor lady uttered a sharp cry and fell back, sobbing wildly. "Then I have nothing—nothing!" she screamed. "My darlings are beggared!"

Phyllis rang for wine, and Mr. Hurd leaped to his feet with apprehension of the truth.

"What do you mean, Mrs. Wyndham?" he demanded.

Mrs. Wyndham rested her head on Phyllis's arm and drank the wine she held to her lips.

"Last March," she began feebly, "Mr. Abbott came to me and explained—or seemed to explain—matters to me. At that time he told me he had bought iron for the works as a speculation, expecting it to appreciate in value. Instead it fell, and the business was temporarily embarrassed in consequence. He asked me to let him negotiate a loan with this house as security."

Mr. Hurd, who had been pacing the floor furiously, stopped short, with a fervent imprecation. Halting before the feeble creature who had been so duped, he thrust his hands deep into his pockets and gazed down on her. "And you did it?" he growled.

Mrs. Wyndham bowed her head lower. "It was a mere formality, he said. The business needed but to be tided over its present embarrassment, which the ready money thus raised would do, and then the loan would be paid and the house stand as free as before. So I gave it as security."

"Just heaven! Why didn't Henry leave everything in trust for you in the hands of a decent man!" cried Mr. Hurd, furiously. "To trick a woman, and such a guileless woman as you, like that! The miserable, currish scamp! Why didn't you mention this to me, madam?"

"Because Mr. Abbott begged me not to; he said none but ourselves, partners in the concern, stockholders of the corporation, should know of it, or it might make the stock panicky—I am sure he said panicky," murmured the wretched woman.

"Then I am afraid Miss Jessamy's picture is not so overdrawn," groaned the lawyer. "You will have no principal except what the personal property, the furniture and the pictures will bring."

"And I have ruined my children—my dear, blessed, pretty girls, for whom I would gladly die, and whose father was so happy to feel that he had secured them from the hard side of life! He knew in his youth what privation meant—my dear, good Henry. Oh, I can't bear it! I won't have it so! It isn't true!" And Mrs. Wyndham went off into hysterical cries, which ended all possibility of further discussion.

Jessamy ran to call Violet to help her mother to her room; Bab lay on the floor, a collapsed heap of misery, sobbing in terror of her mother's agony and the affliction, dimly understood, which had fallen on them in the midst of the dainty fabrics and happy plans. But Phyllis, trembling and white, yet calm, laid her cold hands on her aunt and gently forced her into quiet. She lifted her eyes, no longer blue, but jet black, with their dilated pupils blazing with righteous wrath, to Mr. Hurd's face. "Is there no law to make that villain give up what he stole?" she demanded fiercely.

The lawyer looked at her with the good fighter's quick recognition of the same quality in another. "I'll try mighty hard to find it, Phyllis," he said. "The trouble is that a consummate rogue knows how to cover his tracks. He has undoubtedly put everything out of his hands. But we'll make him show when it was done; and if he has taken such steps this winter past, we can force him to disgorge. There is one comfort: I'll make New York a confoundedly unpleasant place for him to try to do business in."

Kind Violet, with her black face gray from sympathy and fright, came back with Jessamy, and put her strong arms around her mistress's fragile body, lifting her like a baby. "Come right along, you po' little lamb lady," she said. "Miss Jes'my telephone for doctoh, an' I'm goin' make you quiet an' comf'able in bed. Don' you cry 'notheh teah; Vi'let ain't goin' let nothin' come neah you."

Utterly exhausted in mind and body, Mrs. Wyndham found comfort in the soft voice and loving arms. She drooped her head on the pink gingham shoulder of the tall girl, and let herself be carried away to her chamber as if she had been a child.

Jessamy turned to Mr. Hurd. "You will not mind if we received the news rather badly," she said. "We shall all do our parts when we have learned them. It—it—came rather suddenly, you see." Evidently Jessamy was going to be the princess her cousin called her, and meet misfortune proudly.

"You dear child," said the lawyer, his eyes softening and dimming as he looked in the pretty face, blanched white, and noted the lines holding the soft lips grimly set to keep them from quivering. "You are little heroines—you and Phyllis. Don't try to be too brave; it is better to cry, and then wipe away the tears to see what is to be done after the shipwreck."

"There is only one thing I want to ask you now, Mr. Hurd; then, perhaps, we would better not talk any more to-day: What are we likely to have to live on if we sell our things?" asked Jessamy.

"You know it is guesswork; no one can more than approximate the result of sales," answered Mr. Hurd. "Your father knew good pictures, and there are many of considerable value here, but summer is no time to offer them. I should say you were likely to have returns of about thirty thousand dollars, which, if I invest it at six per cent., will give you nearly two thousand a year. Now, good-by, my dears, for this morning. Try not to grieve; no one knows what is best for him in this curious world, and the day may come when you will be grateful for this change of fortune. People are usually better and stronger for trying their mettle as well as their muscle. God bless you."

Jessamy did not attempt to answer. Mr. Hurd laid his hand gently on each head, and went away.

Left to themselves, Jessamy and Phyllis looked at each other and around the pretty room, with the couch still strewn with the samples for their dancing-gowns; the books, pictures, ornaments they had bought scattered everywhere. With a sudden rush of memory, they saw themselves little children, playing about their kind father—for he had been father to them both—in that very room, and with equal clearness saw the years before them in which this beautiful home had no being, but, instead, privations more awful to their imaginations because they had no clue to their actual meaning.

The necessity for self-restraint being removed, with a common impulse Jessamy and Phyllis turned, and, throwing their arms around each other, burst into passionate weeping—the despairing weeping of youth which has not yet learned that nothing on earth is final.

Bab stirred uneasily and sat up on the floor, wiping her own eyes and trying to smile. "Don't cry like that, girls; please don't," she said. "It doesn't matter so much about me, because I always go off one way or the other, but I can't stand it if you are wretched." She gathered herself up, and went slowly over to the others. "We're young and beautiful," she said, "and we have some few brains; we'll make another fortune for ourselves. I think, perhaps, I'll marry an oil man with millions. Smile—for mercy's sake smile—Jess and Phyl!"

But Jessamy and Phyllis, who had controlled themselves while Bab sobbed, could not raise their heads.

Bab was mercurial—always, as she herself put it, "going off" to extremes. She had cried her first terror away, and now the necessity of her nature to look on the bright side and find something funny in all situations began to assert itself.

"I think likely two thousand a year will be a lot when we get used to it, though it costs that to clothe us all now, I suppose. I expect to learn to manage so well that we can adopt twins on the money we have left over. I shall go to get points from Ruth Wells; I always thought she was splendid, and longed to know her; she understands how to make every quarter a half-dollar. Now, girls, we're going to be like the people in the story-books, and learn who are our true friends—don't you know how misfortune always tests them? Look up—smile! 'Rise, Sally, rise; dry your weeping eyes!'"

"Don't, Bab," murmured Jessamy, faintly. "You haven't an idea of what has really happened." But she raised her head, and attempted to check her tears as she spoke.

Bab saw it with secret triumph; she was actually talking herself into something like cheerfulness. "Don't I! I have quite as much experience as you, miss, anyway. Still, I'm willing to confess I'd rather not be poor," she added, with the air of making a generous concession. "But I feel sure we'll be happy yet, because I, for one, have got to be. But it is rather hard to get thrown off your high wall when you've sat on it all your life. Poor Humpty Dumpty! I never properly felt for him before."

And Bab was rewarded for her nonsense by a tearful smile from Jessamy and Phyllis.

CHAPTER II
FRIENDS, COUNSELORS, AND PLANS

THE evening turned cool and damp, with the unreliability of May. Mrs. Wyndham was too ill to rise; the doctor had given her sedatives, and she slept in utter exhaustion. Jessamy, Phyllis, and Barbara dined lightly alone; no one had any desire for food, although the cook sent up the dishes dearest to each young palate, hoping to tempt her young ladies to forget sorrow enough to eat. But this very kindness on the part of Sally below stairs, combined with Violet's positively tragic efforts to be cheerful while she served them, brought sobs into the three throats, and defeated the end of their good will.

After dinner the three girls carried their burdens to Jessamy's room, where an acceptable wood fire was burning. The great house was amply large enough to afford a room for each of the young Wyndhams to occupy unshared. Phyllis's and Bab's were on the third floor, connected by dressing-rooms; Jessamy's was next her mother's, over the dining-room, on the second. Each room expressed, as rooms always do, the character of its occupant. Phyllis's was cheery, yet beautiful, with simple elegance and plenty of space. Her pictures were good, but not all the very highest art; "literary pictures," those which told a story, were not lacking, and many of the photographs, abounding everywhere, were portraits of literary people. The room was lined with low bookcases, and books crowded the tables and the desk.

Barbara's room was an anomaly. Bright Eastern colors gave the general effect of a field of poppies on entering. Pictures of animals, casts of Barye's splendid beasts abounded, with Luca della Robbia's happy cherubs, and a copy of Dürer's portrait of Stephan Paumgärtner, and Rembrandt's "Lesson in Anatomy" to prove how many-sided little Bab was thus far in her development. A small upright piano, with a guitar and mandolin lying on its top, between busts of Paderewski and Beethoven, testified truly that she was the most musical girl of the three.

Jessamy's room was all soft greens and moss browns as to color. Her pictures were chosen for beauty alone, and that of the highest sort. Copies of Botticelli's "Triumph of Spring," his lovely Madonna in the National Gallery, some of Holbein's glorious portraits, two Corots, Carpaccio's "Dream of St. Ursula," Donatello casts, as well as antiques, demonstrated at a glance that the eye of an artist had chosen them to rest upon. But, revealing the corresponding side of Jessamy's nature, were softest down cushions heaped on a divan, dainty toilet accessories in ivory and gold, carved chairs of slumbrous depths, flowers in delicate green Venetian glasses, and, above all, volumes of poems, with Thomas à Kempis and the "Celestial City" on the stand nearest the bed; for Jessamy loved perfect beauty, and turned naturally to its highest ideals and expression.

Into this half-studio, half-chamber, and wholly beautiful room the three girls crept after dinner, drawing their chairs close to the fire and speaking softly, not to disturb Mrs. Wyndham in the next room.

"The only thing for us to do is to find out what we can live on, and then make our plans. If we haven't quite enough money, we must earn it in some way," said Jessamy, with her most mature and responsible air.

"I think the very first thing of all is to find out what that income will be, and Mr. Hurd says we can't know positively until after the sale," said practical Phyllis. "And the next and most awful thing is to find out what we can do. I doubt if we know anything thoroughly enough to earn money by it."

"Do? Why, we'll do anything!" cried Bab. "Jessamy draws and paints beautifully, you are all kinds of a genius, and I—oh, there are lots of things I could do if I tried. Some girls make ever so much money; I'm sure we sha'n't have any trouble when we are once started."

"We have some talents between us, but I am afraid they're trained only well enough for the admiration of ourselves and our friends; when it comes to getting something more solid than flattery for our cleverness—well, I'm afraid! I can't help seeing that Jessamy's work, though it is talented, is amateurish. Bab plays, and burns things with her pokers, to our delight; but she can't play like a person who has been grinding at music in earnest six or eight hours a day. And as to me, when I write a story you think it is great, but I see it lacks something. It may be correct English and a good idea, but it is not worth money because of the thing that isn't in it; and I suspect that quality is the mark of training and experience," said Phyllis, sadly.

"I don't see why you try to discourage us, Phyl," said Bab, in an aggrieved tone. "I think we ought to bolster each other up."

"And I think we ought to face facts, and that as soon as we can," said Phyllis, firmly. "We've lived so far in a dream. I've been thinking hard all the afternoon, and I've realized how cruel such cases as ours are. There was auntie, left with great wealth and no more business knowledge than a baby. And here are we, three girls with brains enough to be useful and enough money to have had a practical training in some direction, no more ready to meet emergencies than so many kittens. We couldn't compete with tenement-house girls, with all our advantages and their drawbacks."

"Phyllis is right," said Jessamy, with conviction. "Still, we must compete if we must."

"She is not right; I'm sure we can make lots of money with no special training," said Bab, indignantly. "Good gracious! There's 'our inheritance'! We never once thought of it!"

Six years before, an aunt of Mr. Wyndham, dying on her New Hampshire farm, had left each of her grand-nieces five thousand dollars. They had rather laughed at it, and never alluded to it save as "their inheritance"; yet now, recalled suddenly by Bab, it shone across their path like a ray of sunshine. Taken from the bank where it lay and reinvested at higher interest, it would materially help them in an hour when a thousand dollars had assumed new proportions.

"Mercy, yes! I quite forgot it," cried Jessamy, her face brightening. "At six per cent., what would that be a year?"

This was too great a mental problem for these would-be business women, whose arithmetic was that of most pupils of fashionable schools for girls. Bab sprang up for pencil and paper. "Nine hundred dollars!" she announced triumphantly. "That is quite an addition to our fortune, isn't it?"

"I suppose there isn't much good in making plans," said Jessamy. "We've got to trust Mr. Hurd to guide us. If we are no use, as Phyllis believes—and probably is right in believing—we had better live quite poorly for a while, and fit ourselves to do something well. I don't want to rush into any kind of half-good employment, if by self-denial, perhaps even hardship, at first, we might amount to something in the end."

"Hail Minerva!" cried Phyllis. "You'll be as thoroughbred a working girl, if you must, as you were fine lady; and that's what I love you for, Jasmine blossom."

"My poor, unfortunate children, are you sitting here in the dark?" said a voice. "Violet told me I should find you up-stairs. I saw that dreadful item in 'The Evening Post,' Is it true?"

"How do you do, Aunt Henrietta?" said Jessamy, rising, while Bab barely stifled a groan. "About the failure? Yes, I am afraid it is quite true."

Mrs. Hewlett was Mr. Wyndham's aunt; he had been her favorite nephew because he was her namesake. Her nieces did not love their great-aunt; she had a strong tendency to speak her opinions, if they were unpleasant to the hearer; sincerity and a profound conviction that she was infallible in judgment being Mrs. Henrietta Hewlett's most marked characteristics. Jessamy, Phyllis, and Barbara recognized in her coming an added hardship at the end of their hard day.

"I always knew it would end this way," said Aunt Henrietta, dropping into an easy-chair and letting her cloak slip to the floor while she untied her bonnet strings. "Your mother has no business ability whatever. Poor Henry!"

"Mama did not make the iron company fail, aunt; and papa can't need pity now as much as she does," said Bab, losing her temper instantly, as she always did on encountering "the drum-major," as she irreverently called her great-aunt.

"How are you left?" demanded Aunt Henrietta, ignoring Bab, to Jessamy's profound gratitude.

"We shall have only what the contents of this house will bring, besides the five thousand apiece left us by Aunt Amelia," said Jessamy.

Aunt Henrietta held up both hands in genuine horror. "My poor sister had no notion that her little legacy would be your all,—for of course you can't get anything for second-hand furniture. So you are actually beggared! Well, it is even worse than I expected."

"Not quite beggars, aunt," said Phyllis. "We expect to have two thousand a year. And if you foresaw Mr. Abbott's dishonesty, you are the only one who mistrusted him. Uncle Henry believed in him as firmly as in himself. Of course, if you read the papers, you know no one is to blame for anything, unless for trusting Mr. Abbott."

"Two thousand for such a family as you!" ejaculated Aunt Henrietta, characteristically passing over the less disagreeable points in Phyllis's remarks. "It is practically beggary. You have been brought up in the most extravagant way—never taught the value of money. Your mother has spoiled you from the cradle. I suppose you will run through what little ready money you have, and then expect to be helped by your friends."

"Really, Aunt Henrietta, I cannot see why you assume us entirely to lack common sense, principles, and pride," said Jessamy, struggling hard to keep her voice steady. "We have already determined to make our income suffice us, investing our little capital."

"H'm! Two thousand suffice! You're exactly like your mother—absolutely unpractical. If poor Henry—" began Mrs. Hewlett.

"Now, Aunt Henrietta, just drop mama, if you please," said Barbara, hotly. "She is the dearest mother in the world, and papa loved her with all his heart. I don't see what good there can be in trying to blame some one for this trouble; but if any one were to blame, it was dear papa himself, and not mama, for he left her all his wealth and all his trust in Mr. Abbott, and never taught her the least thing about business. Mama never said nor did an unkind thing in all her gentle life, and I won't have her abused. And, in spite of what you say now, you were always very proud of her lovely face and manners, and glad enough to point out your niece, Mrs. Henry Wyndham. And you've boasted about all of us while we were rich, and now you talk as if this trouble was the punishment of our sins, especially mama's. And I won't have you mention her—dear, crushed mama—lying in there heartbroken for our sakes!"

Bab's cheeks had been getting redder and her voice higher through this speech, until at this point she burst into tempestuous tears.

"Hoity-toity, miss! Don't be impertinent," said the old lady. "You'll be dependent on your friends' charity in six months, and you will be wise not to offend them."

"I won't! I'll beg from door to door or be a cashgirl at Macy's first," sobbed Bab. "Besides, I'm not impertinent; I'm only firm."

The idea of Bab firm on the verge of hysterics made Phyllis and Jessamy smile faintly. "Don't say any more, Bab; you know it's no use," whispered Phyllis, stroking the hot cheek, while Jessamy said: "You must not mind Bab, aunt. We are all somewhat overwrought, but I agree with her that, if you please, we will leave our mother out of the discussion."

"I don't mind that flighty child; she never had a particle of stability, and has not been taught self-control or respect," said Aunt Henrietta, with what in a less dignified person would have been a sniff. "What kind of work are you going to take up? For of course it is ridiculous to talk of living on two thousand a year, and you must earn your living."

"We have not decided anything yet, aunt; we've had only a few hours to get used to being poor," replied Phyllis.

"Well, I've been considering your case, and I don't believe there is anything you can do decently; your education has been the thistle-down veneer girls get, nowadays," said their aunt, disregarding the fact that she would have been still less prepared to meet misfortune than her nieces at their age.

"Veneer!" echoed Jessamy. "I hope not, though I don't know what thistle-down veneer is. I wouldn't mind being honest white pine, but I should despise the best veneer."

"As far as I can see, you would do well to go out as a nurse girl. There are many who would be glad to get a young woman of refinement, and you would be treated nicely in a good place," said Aunt Henrietta.

Bab gasped. Phyllis cried: "A nurse girl! Jessamy!" But Jessamy turned white to her lips. "Will you allow me to sit on your steps and sun my young charge, if I take care to keep my aprons clean?" she asked slowly, her voice low and ominously steady.

"Don't be a fool, Jessamy, and have high-flown notions. Any work is honorable, and you are not trained to skilled labor," said her aunt.

"All labor is certainly honorable, aunt," said Phyllis, seeing that Jessamy dared not speak again. "But there are degrees in its attractiveness. It would be short-sighted wisdom to put a talented creature like our princess to doing what the humblest emigrant can perform, wasting all her opportunities. I am afraid I cannot understand how you could consent to pushing any of us down, instead of helping us up."

"We shall not need help," said Jessamy, her head up like a young racer. "I hope to manage quite well alone. Will you excuse us from more of this sort of talk, aunt? We have had a hard day, and are tired."

Mrs. Hewlett rose; her eldest niece always overawed her, in spite of her determination not to mind what she to herself called "Jessamy's affected airs."

"I felt sure I should not find you chastened by misfortune," she said. "You should take your downfall in a more Christian spirit. I trust you will heed me in one point, at least. Sell your best clothes and ornaments. It will be most unbecoming if, in your altered circumstances, you dress in articles bought for Henry Wyndham's daughters. People will make the most unkind comments if you do."

Barbara had recovered by this time. "Aren't we still Henry Wyndham's daughters, aunt?" she asked guilelessly. "I didn't realize parentage as well as inheritance was vested in the business. What a calamity that it failed! As to unkind remarks, no mere acquaintances will make them; all but our relatives will understand that we could afford fine things when we had them, and that failure naturally did not destroy them. I give you fair warning, I mean to look my best, whatever the rest do, else I may be defeated in my plan to get back to luxury by a brilliant marriage."

"Bab, how could you?" said Jessamy, reproachfully, as their aunt disappeared. "She will take that for solemn truth and despise you. There's no use in making her worse than she is."

"I couldn't, Lady Jessamy; nature is perfect in her works. And I'll tell you one thing for your edification: If I did mean it, and did succeed in marrying for money, so far from despising me, she would be proud of me, and talk to every one about 'my charming niece, Barbara,'" said Bab, venomously.

"Oh, don't, Bab!" cried Phyllis, distressed. "We've been poor only one day, and here are you growing bitter! That's the worst of this sort of misfortune, I feel sure in advance. It shows people in such a horrid light that the victims get cynical and nasty. Do let us keep sweet and wholesome through it all, for if we're that, and have each other, nothing else matters seriously."

"You dear little saint Phyllis!" cried Bab. "My bitterness so far is shallow, so don't worry. You're better than bicarbonate of soda to sweeten what Sally calls 'a sour risin'.'"

An hour later Violet brought up a note that came opportunely to counteract the disagreeable effect of Mrs. Hewlett's visit. It was from an old friend of their mother, and ran thus:

"My dearest little Girls: I am not going to bother poor Emily to-night, but I cannot sleep unless I write you. I read that horrible item in 'The Sun' about the Wyndham Iron Company, and I am wretched. Maybe it will be less bad than it now seems—I pray it may! But I want you to realize that my house, my love, are entirely yours. You are all coming to spend the summer with me at Mount Desert—there is plenty of room in my house—so that is settled. And in the fall we shall see. If there is to be a sale, I shall attend to it myself, with Mr. Hurd's help, for I am a good business woman. And don't make too heroic resolves just now. If you must earn your living, some of us will see that it is done in ways in which your sweetness, cleverness, and delicacy will not be wasted. But I should try very hard not to be pushed out into a world unfit for women to fight in. And don't forget how much is left, how much you are blessed in yourselves—I know you do remember it—and be sure you are going to be perfectly happy again. Dear little girls, I'm crying as I write, but that is because I love you so much, and am so sorry. We won't let you do anything too bitter, and I know how splendidly you are meeting trouble, because I know your dear, good mother, and how truly well you have been taught. Tell my old friend I am coming to her in the morning—to refuse me if she likes, but I hope to comfort her. Good night, my poor little chickens, out in your first storm. There is sunshine ahead, but I wish that I could gather you all under my wings.

"Your old, loving friend,
"Mary Van Alyn."

The girls cried on one another's shoulders after they had read this warm message, full of loving comprehension of their needs and natures; but they were tears which did them good and sent them to bed refreshed and comforted.

In the morning Bab started off early to see Ruth Wells, as she had planned. Ruth was a brisk little creature of the same age as Bab, who had been the Wyndhams' schoolmate for a short time, but who had met with misfortune too, and had left school and dropped almost entirely out of their lives; only Bab had kept up a desultory friendship with her.

Ruth lived with her mother in a little flat—apartment is too dignified a word—not far from Morningside Heights. She was skilful with her needle, as at any work of her hands, and earned, by embroidering for two wholesale houses, enough to supplement sufficiently an income hardly large enough to pay their low rent.

Bab had always wondered to find her so blithe and happy; to-day she came determined to solve, if possible, the secret of her content.

As she pressed the electric button under the speaking-tube over which the name "Wells" shone on a narrow strip of brass, the latch of the front door clicked, and, pushing it open, Barbara mounted the three flights of stairs and rang the bell by the door at their head.

Ruth herself answered the summons, and uttered an exclamation of pleasure on seeing Bab. "Oh, Babbie, dear, it does affect you, doesn't it?" she cried at once. "I saw an account of the Wyndham Iron Works failure in this morning's 'Times.'"

"It affects us so much, Ruth, that I came up here the first thing to get your advice; you have had experience in coming down in the world. And I want to say just here," Barbara added, with heightened color, "that I wish I had been here oftener, and that Phyl and Jessamy had been with me. We never realized how lonely you must have been at first." And Bab looked around the little parlor with new interest.

"Oh, I was so much younger than we are now when our troubles came that it was easier to bear," said Ruth, brightly. "Besides, I never had nearly as much as you to lose. And as to coming to see me, you have always been a good friend, Bab. We lived too far apart in every sense to meet often. When one is poor one cannot be intimate with those who are living luxuriously; it is so stupid for those who have fallen from past glories to expect old friendships kept up, and call old acquaintances snobs when they are not. It is impossible for extremes to meet often or agreeably, for one doesn't care to know the very wealthy; they are not half as interesting as those whose faculties have been sharpened—they don't know facts, and it is not their fault that they don't. Even you, Babbie, have not understood words in the sense I did when we have talked lately, and I saw it. Then a busy person hasn't time for people who don't know what must means. It is far nicer to have friends who are busy too, and don't waste precious time. But goodness! You see, I talk just as fast as ever; and maybe you are not going to be poor, after all! Is the loss as heavy as the papers had it?" While Ruth had talked she had gotten off Bab's outer garments, and now seated herself at her embroidery frame, while Bab drew a chair in front of it and shook her head. "Quite as bad; worse, in fact," she said, and proceeded to tell Ruth the whole story.

"Now, what I want to know, Ruth, is whether four persons can possibly live on two thousand a year—supposing we have that—until we can learn to be useful?" she said in conclusion.

"Of course they can," said Ruth, with cheerful decision; she did not seem to think the case very bad. Taking a pencil and paper from the window-sill at her side, she began to reckon.

"Do you think you could take a little flat and do your own work?" she asked.

"Mercy, no!" cried Bab, in horror. "Why, we'd starve! We can't do anything; we must board."

"That's a pity, for cheap boarding is unwholesome, vulgar, and generally horrid," said Ruth. "However, if you must, you must; but I'm sure you'll be taught better. Mama and I began that way, but we were soon cured. You can get two rooms, and pay—let's see—two in a room—say seven dollars each—twenty-eight dollars a week. Twenty-eight times fifty-two—fourteen hundred and fifty-six dollars a year. That leaves you five hundred for washing, clothes, possible doctor's bill, and so on."

"Can we board for seven dollars apiece?" asked Bab, rather awed by Ruth's businesslike methods.

"You can; it will be pretty horrid, but, honestly, I wouldn't spend more till you increase your income. Your mother isn't well, and you will need extra dainties for her, no matter where you board nor what you pay. Mama and I ran too close to our margin once, and then she got ill. It taught me a lesson I did not forget," said Ruth.

"You have been very kind and interested, Ruth; and you have helped me a lot in more than advice," said Bab, rising to go. "I shouldn't mind being poor if I could be like you."

"Well, I believe I have a talent for poverty; it has its good side," laughed Ruth. "And I'll tell you one thing, Babbie. Real troubles keep one from imagining affliction, and that is no small gain. I am happy because I am busy, and my mind is too full of my responsibilities and cares to let me worry over shadows; I haven't time to consider how I feel, even; and sometimes, when I suspect I might be a tiny bit ill if I thought about it, I go to work and drive it away. You don't know what a good thing it is for girls to have lots that must be done. Come see our flat," added brave Ruth, leading the way into a bedroom off the parlor. "This is mama's room; next it is mine. Then, here is the bath-room—you see, it is quite large—for a flat! And isn't this a nice little dining-room? Sunny too! And here is the kitchen. Mama, this is Barbara Wyndham."

Mrs. Wells was bending over a double boiler set on the gas-range; she was plainly dressed in black, shielded by a large apron. She lifted a sweet, well-bred face to smile at Bab, and held out a delicate, daintily formed hand to greet her, with no apology for her employment. "The maid's room is our store-room, for we do our own work, with a woman coming in to wash and iron and sweep. Now, isn't this a nice flat? And we pay only twenty-eight dollars a month for it!" cried Ruth, triumphantly.

Bab looked at the rooms, as they were shown to her, with newly perceptive eyes. Everything was of the plainest, yet so refined and dainty it could but be pretty. She began to suspect there were many things in life to learn which would not be unpleasant knowledge. She wondered, coming from the spacious rooms of her home, how Ruth and her mother managed to move about without seriously damaging their anatomy; the chambers, with the furniture in them, looked hardly larger than a good-sized napkin.

But Ruth was so proud of it all, so unconscious of any defects in her home, that Bab could only envy her, though the tiny box of a place did look rather meager in her eyes, and Ruth worked hard all day to maintain it.

"Thank you again, Ruth," she said, as her friend hugged her at the head of the stairs, letting the pity which she had not dared express show in the warmth of the embrace and the tears in her eyes as she kissed her. "I'm coming often, please, for advice and courage. You have already shown me that I need not fear. I suspect our first additional revenue will come from the sale of my book, 'How to be Happy Though Ruined,' illustrated by Ruth Wells."

CHAPTER III
WAYS AND MEANS

EVENTS moved swiftly for the Wyndhams, impelled by the force of necessity. The trust company that had made the loan to Mr. Abbott which had been secured by Mrs. Wyndham's house, learning of the failure of the corporation and that it was unable to meet its indebtedness, fell back on its security, and seized the house so unfortunately pledged to it.

Although Mrs. Wyndham was prepared for this inevitable result of her fatal confidence in Mr. Abbott, it came upon her like a bewildering blow that her house was hers no longer. This, and the fact that the expense of running such an immense establishment would make ruinous inroads on her slender principal in a few weeks, determined her upon hastening her movements and quitting as soon as possible the home she loved, taking up an existence which seemed to her, as she tried to picture it, a horrible nightmare in which she must die if she did not waken.

It was no more difficult for her true friends to mislead Mrs. Wyndham kindly in business matters than it had been for her false friend to defraud her. Mr. Hurd and Mrs. Van Alyn combined to take advantage of her ignorance of affairs, to her profit. It was a bad time of year for a sale, as Mr. Hurd had said; but it was of paramount importance that the painful severing of old ties should be made quickly, not only because it was necessary to begin to receive an income immediately, but in order to avoid the torture of keeping the Wyndhams' troubles an open wound.

To all those whom she hoped the news might interest, Mrs. Van Alyn sent notices that the pictures were to be sold. Collectors and dealers came not only from the city, but from Boston and Philadelphia, for Mr. Wyndham had been well known for the value of his art treasures. Offers were made for the pictures as they hung on the walls, as well as for the marbles and bronzes; on the whole, the prices were fair, considering that it was a forced sale, with no time margin to allow the owners opportunity to do better. At least this method saved the commission on an auction sale, which had to be added to net profits in estimating them.

The horses brought an excellent price; they were young, perfectly matched, and spirited, yet gentle. Parting from them was perhaps the hardest pang Barbara had to endure. Castor and Pollux were really her friends—as, indeed, any animal she came in contact with was sure to be. But she derived a grain of comfort from the promise, which she went personally to obtain from their new owner, that even if they began to break down he would never allow them to be sold into hardship—a promise which, it is to be hoped, was kept for the sake of the girl who had tried to protect the creatures she loved.

Mrs. Van Alyn persuaded Mrs. Wyndham to come to her for the final two weeks of her nominal ownership of the house. It would be less painful, she thought, if the poor lady could pass its threshold for the last time, shutting the door on everything as she had loved it, rather than remain during the dismantling, to see profane hands ruthlessly dragging from their places the mementos of her happy marriage and the childhood of her daughters.

Accordingly, one warm, sunny morning, Mrs. Van Alyn's rotund horses drew up at the door, and Mrs. Wyndham, looking very frail and newly widowed under her long veil, came slowly down the stairs, leaning on Jessamy's arm. She had made a painful pilgrimage to each room, pausing at certain spots, laying her hand lingeringly on the furniture, and kneeling long before the great brown-leather chair which had been her husband's, her face hidden on its glossy seat, which was wet with her tears when she raised her head.

At each door she stopped, rested her cheek a moment against the casement, and kissed the dark wood as lovingly as a Jew would kiss the mazuzah on the casement; for this had been her home, a sacred temple, and the law of love was written on its door-posts. It was a long and weary task to get the poor creature to the end of her stations of sorrow, and the three girls, as well as she, were white and faint when they reached the hall. But finally Mrs. Wyndham came forth on the door-step, and for the last time the heavy mahogany door swung close, shutting out its mistress forever.

Jessamy drove with her mother to the kind friend who waited her with loving welcome, but Phyllis and Bab sobbed long and tempestuously on the stairs after Mrs. Wyndham had gone, and black Violet and blacker Sally, with Irish Ellen, the laundress, on the basement stairs, sobbed with them.

That afternoon the work of stripping the house was begun. The pictures were boxed for their various owners, vans were coming and going, taking the furniture to auction-rooms, and all was melancholy confusion.

Mrs. Van Alyn and Phyllis took charge of the painful work. Mrs. Van Alyn quietly set aside some of the dearer mementos of past happiness not too valuable to be kept out of the sale, to be sent to a store-room she had taken for the purpose. Nothing splendid was retained; only the pictures in the girls' rooms, their own special pet chairs, desks, tables, Bab's piano, and Mr. Wyndham's library chair. Mrs. Van Alyn foresaw and tried to provide for the day when, in one way or another, some of the Wyndhams would again have a home in which this flotsam and jetsam from their early shipwreck would be welcome. Not even Phyllis knew that their kind friend was doing this, though she unconsciously furnished the information which guided Mrs. Van Alyn in making her selections.

It took but a week to undo the work of twenty years. Mr. Wyndham had bought this house on his marriage, and his family had known no other home; yet by the Saturday following the Monday on which Mrs. Wyndham had gone away from it, it was barren of everything except a bonnet and shawl hanging on a hook behind the kitchen door, the property of the woman who had come in to sweep out the empty rooms.

Jessamy, Phyllis, and Barbara roamed through the house as their mother had done, like her, bidding it farewell in every corner, listening, half frightened, to the echo of their footsteps on the bare floors. Their power to feel had been spent in the preceding days of their painful tasks; utterly weary in body and mind, they closed the door of their dismantled home behind them, and passed down the steps into their new existence.

It had been agreed at first among the Wyndhams that they would not accept Mrs. Van Alyn's invitation to Mount Desert for the summer; but Mrs. Wyndham was so ill with utter prostration of nerves and strength, and the girls themselves so unfit to encounter any further trials, that the question decided itself otherwise. They gladly availed themselves of another kindness from the devoted friend who was an antidote against heavy doses of the poisonous bitterness of finding there were many the warmth of whose affection was much tempered by change of fortune.

The summer at Mount Desert sent the Wyndhams back to New York fortified in mind and body to meet their fate. Phyllis especially was much cheered by the fact that she had made a friend in Maine in the person of an old lady from Boston, who had been quite charmed by her, of whom she always spoke as "the dear little girl," and to whom she promised a position as reader and companion to herself at any time that fortune failed Phyllis in New York or that her family could spare her.

The sale of the Wyndhams' effects—silver, glass, jewelry, as well as pictures, marbles, furniture, and horses—had brought but a trifle over twenty thousand dollars. Fortunately Mrs. Wyndham disapproved of bills, so there was but little outstanding indebtedness to discharge before investing the remnant of their fortune. But even at six per cent. it could not yield more than half of the sum they had calculated on having, and the once lightly valued legacy to the girls from their unknown great-aunt Amelia was required to bring their little capital up to the point of returning them two thousand a year.

The first step to be made by these novices in the ungentle art of living was to find a boarding-place. This undertaking was assumed by Jessamy and Phyllis, aided by Ruth Wells, who knew better than they did what to seek and what to avoid.

The limitations of their purse defined the boundaries of their search; only places where low prices obtained were open to the Wyndhams—a fact in itself difficult to master at first; and the poor little pilgrims up Poverty Hill shrank from the mere exterior of some of the houses, the advertisements of which they had cut out and pasted on a sheet of paper, making a "vertebrate" like Mrs. March's in Howells's story.

At last they summoned courage to ring the bell of an old-fashioned, high-stoop house in a quiet down-town street.

"What a queer smell, Ruth!" murmured Phyllis, sniffing the air critically and speaking low, because the sight and sound of some one moving about, opening and shutting drawers in the back parlor, were distinctly visible and audible through the plain places in the pattern of the ground-glass panels of the folding doors.

"Boarding-house!" said Ruth, laconically. "It's the regular odor; ghosts of Christmases—past Christmas dinners, I mean—Fourth of July, and no particular days besides."

At this moment the doors slid back, revealing a folding-bed, let down and unmade, and a gaunt figure in a worn black silk skirt and lavender waist stood confessed.

"We are looking for board for four ladies—a widow with two daughters and a niece," said Ruth, making herself spokeswoman. "You take boarders, I believe? We saw your advertisement in yesterday's 'Herald.'"

"We receive a few guests," replied the gaunt person, correctively. "We prefer gentlemen."

"Yes; we knew that on general principles," said Ruth, easily; "but these are ladies. What rooms have you?"

"A hall bedroom on the second and two square rooms on the third," returned the gaunt one. "Will you look at them?"

"If you please," said Jessamy, and they were conducted up the dingy stairs to the third floor. The floors were covered alike with red Brussels carpet; the wall-papers—gray with gilt figures in one, brown with red roses in the other—were alike tarnished and stained. A marble-topped bureau of black walnut, a bedstead, and three chairs, with one rocker, all of the same expressionless wood, furnished each room.

"We could never put up with this, Ruth; don't delay here," whispered Jessamy, but Ruth shook her head. "What do you ask for these rooms?" she inquired.

"Twenty dollars a week for each, two in a room," replied the gaunt person.

"Thank you; they would not answer," said Jessamy. "Why, I should die here, or go mad of odors and ugliness," she added for Phyllis's private ear.

"We might consider thirty-five a week, as it is one family," suggested the gaunt person at the door.

"No, thanks," said Phyllis. "Only fancy! Seven dollars more than we mean to pay, and for what? Are all boarding-houses like this, Ruth?"

"Not in detail; similar in genus. I tell you, you would be far better off in your own little flat, cooking your own little meals on your own little gas-range, in your own little spider. However, don't lose heart at the first one; there are degrees of badness," laughed Ruth.

The second attempt was made further up town, in a street among the Thirties. The parlor into which the girls were ushered was more cheerful here than in the first case, but was furnished in a style that jarred on the nerves through the eyes, just as grating slate-pencils jar them through the ears.

A portly person, with a much jetted front, sailed into the room, smiling affably.

"We take a few guests," she said in reply to the inquiry for board, precisely as the gaunt person down town had replied, adding, like her, that she "preferred gentlemen." "I have the back parlor on this floor and a hall bedroom on the third vacant just now, though we rarely have a vacancy," she said graciously. "You might manage with a folding-bed in the large room and the hall bedroom."

"And your prices?" asked Phyllis. "Still, it doesn't matter; we must have two square rooms near each other."

"I should charge eighteen dollars for two in the back parlor, and I would let the hall bedroom to two for fourteen—my table board is six dollars apiece without a room," said she of the jets.

"No; we shall pay only fourteen for each of the rooms we are looking for," said Jessamy, whose courage was rising.

"Oh, I couldn't consider it," said the landlady, sternly. "Still, there are two lovely rooms on the top floor you might have for that. The furnace does not go up there, so they would be heated by a stove. You wouldn't mind looking after your own fires?"

"I should mind my mother going up so many flights; still, we will look at the rooms," said Jessamy. The long climb to the top of the house brought them to two rooms together, though not connected; sunny, rather cheerful, and, though plainly furnished, not so ugly as the first ones.

"We are not willing to go up so high, but we will let you know if we consider them further," said Jessamy.

"I should require references as to respectability," said the landlady, firmly.

"I am glad to hear it; so should I," said Jessamy, and departed, cutting short a list of distinguished people who had once boarded there.

Three days of weary search brought forth no better results. The main difference in the places the discouraged girls visited was that in one house the stairs went up on the right side of the hall, in another on the left; that in one the furniture of the rooms was black walnut, in another oak—when it was maple or mahogany it was beyond the Wyndhams' limit of price.

These days taught the three girls—for Barbara had joined the others—more of life than their entire years so far had shown them, and the fruit of this tree of knowledge was bitter indeed.

They were unable to find anything within their means better than the upper rooms in the West Thirty —— Street house, and decided to risk the four flights—five including the basement—and the dubious prospect of the care of their own fires.

Having decided, they proceeded to make the best of what each felt in her heart to be a very bad bargain, with the courage each possessed in different forms.

There were two days intervening between that on which the new boarding-place was engaged and the day on which it was to be "infested," as Bab called taking possession. That young person assumed the task of beautifying their unattractive quarters, nor would she permit any of the others to see her improvements, but hammered her thumbs and strained her unaccustomed arms putting up curtains, shelves, casts, and photographs unassisted, in order to "usher her family into a bower of bliss" when it moved in.

On the afternoon before this event, Barbara came along Thirty —— Street from Sixth Avenue. Her arms were full of flower-pots—two filled them—and a boy came behind with a basket containing six more. Bab had not been able to resist the temptation to invest in plants to fill her mother's sunny window and make the room a little more cheerful. She hurried down the street, and paused at the foot of the steps long enough to let her listless attendant squire catch up with her. She had no hand to give her skirts, but she sprang up the steps, regardless of the danger of tripping. At the same instant the front door opened and a cocker spaniel rushed out, barking wildly and throwing himself downward with that apparent utter disregard of whether head or tail went first, and of anything which might be in his path, characteristic of a young and blissful little dog.

"A YOUNG MAN DASHED DOWN THE STEPS INTO THE RUINS."

He flung himself down, and Barbara stepped aside; her balance was uncertain, and her skirts unmanageable by reason of her laden arms. She tripped, fell, and flower-pots, dog, and girl rolled crashing and scattering dirt in all directions into the boy and basket two steps lower, ending in a tangle on the sidewalk.

From the doorway a horrified voice cried: "Good heavens! Nixie!" and a young man dashed down the steps into the ruins.

"Are you hurt?" he cried anxiously, as he fished Barbara out of the wreck. Nixie had already slunk out from under, and was wagging his tail deprecatingly, with glances of mingled shame and amazement at his master.

"I think I am," said Barbara, raising her head and trying to speak cheerfully.

The young man replaced her hat—it had fallen over her eyes—and revealed a woebegone little face. Earth plastered the saucy chin, one cheek was cut, and blood trickled from the bridge of the poor little tilted nose, making a paste wherever the loam from the flower-pots had spattered, and this was nearly everywhere. Barbara's hair was coming down, her hat was shapeless, and her eyes tearful from the smarting wounds.

"By Jove, you're a wreck! It's a shame!" cried the young man. "I'll whip Nixie."

"You'll do nothing of the sort!" said Barbara, with spirit. "How did he know I was coming up—coming up like a flower—at that moment? You might as well whip me. Nobody is to blame, and I'll be all right when I've washed and sewed and plastered, and done a few other things."

"Well, you're plucky," said the youth, admiringly. "I'm a doctor in embryo—full fledged next June. I'll take you in and fix you up. Do you—you don't live here?"

"We shall to-morrow; I'm a new boarder," said Barbara. "Oh, I hope my plants aren't broken! Can they be re-potted? We've become poor, and I ought not to have bought them. Why on earth doesn't that boy get up? Is he killed?" she demanded, realizing that her companion in misery was still lying, with his head in the basket, under a debris of flower-pots.

"It's why in earth, rather," laughed the medical student. "Here, you boy, are you alive? You're buried all right! Get up."

The listless boy gathered himself slowly together. "Well, I'll be darned!" he said.

"You'll have to be," cried the doctor, sitting down to laugh, and pointing to the rent across the shoulders of the inert one's jacket.

"What ailed that dog? Did he have a fit?" drawled the boy, scowling at Nixie, who slunk behind Barbara self-consciously.

"He wasn't a dog; he was a cat-apult," gasped the doctor.

"Oh, please help me into the house," cried Barbara, half laughing, half crying. Several people had paused to gaze, grinning sympathetically at the scene.

"I beg your pardon! What an idiot to keep you standing here!" cried the medical student, jumping up. "Here, hustle these plants into your basket," he added to the boy. "They're not broken; we can fix them up all right. Where's my key?—there you are! Walk in. Get into the house, Nixie, you crazy pup; you've lost your walk. Leave those plants in the hall, boy, and rush back to your employer and tell him you want as many pots as you had at first, and a bag of dirt, and hurry back with it. Now, Mrs. Black—Mrs. Black, where are you?"

"Here," said the landlady, emerging from the rear. "Why, Miss Wyndham, what has happened?"

"Introduce us, please; we met on the steps," said Barbara's new acquaintance.

"Miss Wyndham—Doctor Leighton," said the bewildered Mrs. Black, automatically.

"Happy to have the honor, Miss Wyndham. There was a mix-up on the steps, Mrs. Black; there's some of it there yet. Let me have some warm water and a sponge, please. Miss Wyndham, take off your hat and have your face washed," said the unabashed boy.

"Not by you," said Barbara.

"Precisely. I'm almost a doctor, and I'm going to see that no dirt is left in your wounds to scar you. Don't be foolish, Miss Wyndham; it's not exactly a ceremonious occasion."

Barbara submitted with no further demur, and soon her face was adorned with strips of court-plaster laid on in a plaid pattern.

"Shall I be scarred?" she asked, surveying the crisscross lines on the bridge of her nose.

"Not a bit," said Doctor Leighton, cheerfully. "Mrs. Black might give you a cup of tea to brace you up."

"Yes," said Mrs. Black, without enthusiasm.

"No, thanks; I hate tea, and I'll be all right. There's the boy back with the new pots," said Barbara.

"Let me help you get the plants in, and I'll settle with the boy, because it's all Nixie's fault," said the young doctor. "Not a word! Get to work, Miss Wyndham."

He placed papers on the floor in the rear hall, apparently oblivious to Mrs. Black's icy disapproval, which inexperienced Barbara found oppressive.

"My father and your father were friends," said the young fellow, packing the earth around a begonia. "I knew you were coming here to board, and I know about the hard blow you've had. It's a shame, and it's all the fault of that scoundrel Abbott."

"Oh, how nice that your father knew papa! That is almost like being friends ourselves," said Barbara, simply. "Yes, it's dreadful for mama to be poor, and for Jessamy. Phyl and I are not going to mind it so much."

"Is Phil your brother?"

"No; Phyllis it is; she's my cousin, only she's just as much my sister as Jessamy, for she has always lived with us. I'm a year younger than she and Jessamy. Jessamy's perfectly beautiful and princessfied, and Phyllis is the most unselfish blessing in the world. I'm only Barbara."

"And I'm only Tom; I'm not a doctor yet. It's awfully jolly you're coming here. Mrs. Black gone? Yes. There isn't any one in the house I care to know; the young people are not my sort. I hope you'll forgive Nixie and me enough to speak to us once in a while," said Tom, getting up and dusting his knees.

"Oh, we shall want to talk to you; Nixie is such a nice dog," laughed Barbara.

"Only Nixie? Well, love my dog, love—oh, it's the other way about! Never mind, though; we can improve old saws. Where are your rooms?"

"First floor from the Milky Way," laughed Bab. "We hate to have mama climb so far, but we couldn't afford better rooms."

Tom Leighton looked down on the swollen, patched little face with brotherly kindness; respect and pity were in his voice as he said gently: "You will make any room bright and homelike. I see why you took your tumble down the steps so well. You are brave in falling, Miss Barbara."

Barbara stooped suddenly to pat Nixie, hiding her wounded face in his glossy curls.

"I'm not always brave," she said huskily. "I am ashamed to think so much about my beautiful room and home. I feel so little and lost in this boarding-house."