believed it. For some reason this girl did not look at Miss Cuyler,
and Miss Cuyler felt grateful to her, and thought she was a nice,
bright little thing; and then another girl said it was only turn
about. The Englishmen had taken all the attractive American girls,
and it was only fair that the English girls should get some of the
nice American men. This girl was an old friend of Eleanore's; but she
was surprised at her making such a speech, and wondered why she had
not noticed in her before similar exhibitions of bad taste. She walked
back to Rivington Street from the luncheon; composing the letter she
would write to him, congratulating him on his engagement. She composed
several. Some of them were very short and cheery, and others rather
longer and full of reminiscences. She wondered with sudden fierce
bitterness how he could so soon forget certain walks and afternoons
they had spent together; and the last note, which she composed in bed,
was a very sad and scornful one, and so pathetic as a work of
composition that she cried a little over it, and went to sleep full of
indignation that she had cried.

She told herself the next morning that she had cried because she was
frankly sorry to lose the companionship of so old and good a friend,
and because now that she had been given much more important work to
do, she was naturally saddened by the life she saw around her, and
weakened by the foul air of the courts and streets, and the dreary
environments of the tenements. As for him, she was happy in his
happiness; and she pictured how some day, when he proudly brought his
young bride to this country to show her to his friends, he would ask
after her. And they would say: "Who! Eleanore Cuyler? Why, don't you
know? While you were on your honeymoon she was in the slums, where she
took typhoid fever nursing a child, and died!" Or else some day, when
she had grown into a beautiful sweet-faced old lady, with white hair,