it's no use to go there."

Mrs. Ellison was ready to weep, and for the first time since her
accident she harbored some bitterness against Mr. Arbuton. They all sat
silent, and the colonel on the sidewalk silently wiped his brow.

Mr. Arbuton, in the poverty of his invention, wondered if there was not
some lodging-house where they could find shelter.

"Of course there is," cried Mrs. Ellison, beaming upon her hero, and
calling Kitty's attention to his ingenuity by a pressure with her well
foot. "Richard, we must look up a boarding-house."

"Do you know of any good boarding-houses?" asked the colonel of the
driver, mechanically.

"Plenty," answered the man.

"Well, drive us to twenty or thirty first-class ones," commanded the
colonel; and the search began.

The colonel first asked prices and looked at rooms, and if he pronounced
any apartment unsuitable, Kitty was despatched by Mrs. Ellison to view
it and refute him. As often as she confirmed him, Mrs. Ellison was sure
that they were both too fastidious, and they never turned away from a
door but they closed the gates of paradise upon that afflicted lady. She
began to believe that they should find no place whatever, when at last
they stopped before a portal so unboarding-house-like in all outward
signs, that she maintained it was of no use to ring, and imparted so
much of her distrust to the colonel that, after ringing, he prefaced his