lemonade."

But Druse did not forget these and other words. She pondered over them
as she lay in her stifling little dark bedroom at night, or attended to
her work by day, and she waged many an imaginary battle for the
beautiful, idle woman who represented the grace of life to her.

The fat janitress sometimes stopped to gossip a moment with Druse.

"Ever seen Miss De Courcy on your floor?" she asked, one day, curiously.

"Yes, ma'am, I--I've seen her," replied Druse, truthfully, the color
rising to her pale cheeks.

"O Lord!" ejaculated the janitress, heaving a portentous sigh from the
depths of her capacious, brown calico-covered bosom, "if I was the owner
of these here flats, instead of the old miser that's got 'em, wouldn't I
have a clearin' out! Wouldn't I root the vice and wickedness out of some
of 'em! Old Lowder don't care what he gits in here, so long's they pay
their rent!"

Druse did not reply. She felt sure that the janitress meant Miss De
Courcy's drunken brother, and she was very glad that "old Lowder" was
not so particular, for she shuddered to think how lonely she should be
were it not for the back flat to the right. Even the janitress, who
seemed so kind, was heartless to Miss De Courcy because she had a
drunken brother!

Druse began to find the world very, very cruel. The days went on, and
the two lives, so radically unlike, grew closer entwined. Druse lost