and escaped, but not before one of the ladies had inquired, with a peal
of laughter, "Who's the kid?" Druse had flushed resentfully, but she did
not care when her friend told her afterward, with a toss of the head,
"_They're_ nothing. They just come here to see how I was fixed."

After a little Druse offered timidly to clean up the room for her, and
quite regularly then, would appear on each Wednesday with her broom and
duster, happy to be allowed to bring order out of chaos.

"Well, you are a good little thing," Miss De Courcy would say, pulling
on her yellow gloves and starting for the street when the dust began to
fly. She never seemed to be doing anything. A few torn books lay about,
but Druse never saw her open them. She had warned Druse not to come in
of an evening, for her brother might be home in a temper. Druse thought
she saw him once, such a handsome man with his hair lightly tinged with
gray; he was turning down the hall as Druse came wearily up the stairs,
and she saw him go in Miss De Courcy's room; but then again when Gusty
was sick, and she had to go down at night and beg the janitress to come
up and see if it were the measles, there was a much younger man, with
reddened eyes, from whose glance Druse shrank as she passed him, and he
certainly reeled a little, and he also went in Miss De Courcy's door,
and from motives of delicacy she did not ask which was he,--though she
felt a deep curiosity to know. Not that Miss De Courcy refrained from
mentioning him. On the contrary, she told heart-rending incidents of his
cruelty, as she tilted back and forth lazily in her rocking-chair, while
Druse sat by, spellbound, her thin hands clasped tightly over the work
in her lap, neglecting even the bon-bons that Miss De Courcy lavished
upon her.

One morning there was a cruel purple mark on the smooth dark skin of