the seat offered her, begin comfortlessly to help herself to some soup
with her left hand. There was leaning across to inquire and pity; there
were half a dozen things suggested, to which she could only reply,
forlornly and impatiently, "I've tried it." None of them could eat much,
or with any satisfaction; this atom in the wrong place set everything
wrong all at once with four people who, till now, had been so cheery.

The spinster lady was seated at some little distance down, on the
opposite side. She began to send quick, interested glances over at them;
to make little half-starts toward them, as if she would speak; and at
last, leaving her own dinner unfinished, she suddenly pushed back her
chair, got up, and came round. She touched Elinor Hadden on the
shoulder, without the least ado of ceremony. "Come out here with me,"
she said. "I can set you right in half a minute;" and, confident of
being followed, moved off briskly out of the long hall.

Elinor gave a one-sided, questioning glance at her sisters before she
complied, reminding Leslie comically of the poor, one-eyed man in the
cars; and presently, with a little hesitation, Mrs. Linceford and
Jeannie compromised the matter by rising themselves and accompanying
Elinor from the room. Leslie, of course, went also.

The lady had her gray bonnet on when they got back to the little parlor;
there is no time to lose in mere waiting for anything at a railway
dining-place; and she had her bag--a veritable, old-fashioned, home-made
carpet thing--open on a chair before her, and in her hand a long, knit
purse with steel beads and rings. Out of this she took a twisted bit of
paper, and from the paper a minute something which she popped between
her lips as she replaced the other things. Then she just beckoned,
hastily, to Elinor.