"I didn't s'pose any lady that was anybody ever thought anything about
girls like me," Jane finally managed to say.

"You're greatly mistaken, my dear girl," said the lady. "Nearly every
one in this world talks a good deal about every one else whom they know
by sight. You really can't imagine how much good it does me to see you
looking so well and pretty. Keep right on looking so, won't you? The
girls of to-day must be our women a few years hence; that's what I keep
impressing upon my daughter day by day,--don't I, dear."

"Indeed you do, mother." Eleanor said it with a look at Jane which was
almost a signal for sympathy: the cobbler's daughter was greatly
mystified by it.

"I don't see," said Jane, after standing awkwardly for a moment in
meditation, "how a girl's goin' to be much of a woman that amounts to
anything one of these days if she's nothin' to do now but dirty work at
a hotel."

"Maybe she could change her work," suggested the lady.

Jane's lips parted into some hard and ugly lines, and she replied,--

"Some things is easier sayin' than doin'."

"Should you like a different position?" asked Mrs. Prency. "I'm sure it
could be had if people knew you wanted it. For instance, I need some
one every day for weeks to come to help my daughter and me with our
sewing and fitting. There are always so many things to be done as
winter approaches. I sometimes feel as if I were chained to my