make ready a comfortable bit of dinner at night. And so, considering
that Elviry was fourteen, and stronger than Druse, any way, and that
John Hand had promised to send a certain little sum to his brother every
month, as well as to clothe Druse, Druse went to live in the fourth flat
in the Vere de Vere.

Perhaps that was not just the name, but it was something equally
high-sounding and aristocratic; and it seemed quite fitting that one of
the dirty little cards that instructed the postman and the caller,
should bear the pleasing name, "Blanche de Courcy." But Druse had never
read novels. Her acquaintance with fiction had been made entirely
through the medium of the Methodist Sunday School library, and the
heroines did not, as a rule, belong to the higher rank in which, as we
know, the lords and ladies are all Aubreys, and Montmorencis, and
Maudes, and Blanches. Still even Druse's untrained eye lingered with
pleasure on the name, as she came in one morning, after having tasted
the delights of life in the Vere de Vere for a couple of weeks. She felt
that she now lived a very idle life. She had coaxed the three children
into a regular attendance at school, and her uncle was always away until
night. She could not find enough work to occupy her, though, true to her
training, when there was nothing else to do she scrubbed everything
wooden and scoured everything tin. Still there were long hours when it
was tiresome to sit listening to the tramping overhead, or the quarrels
below, watching the slow hands of the clock; and Druse was afraid in the
streets yet, though she did not dare say so, because her bold, pert
little cousins laughed at her. She was indeed terribly lonely. Her uncle
was a man of few words; he ate his supper, and went to sleep after his
pipe and the foaming pitcher of beer that had frightened Druse when she
first came. For Druse had been a "Daughter of Temperance" in East Green.
She had never seen any one drink beer before. She thought of the poem