bend of the upper hall she followed, past the upstairs sitting room
and up the second flight toward the sleeping chambers, her heart
beating from the unwonted climb, her breath coming in quick gasps and
her damp hair clinging to her aching forehead.

"Maybe," she exulted secretly, "it will be the nursery that I'll have
--maybe I left something--" she smiled as she caught herself thinking
it on the stairway--"perhaps there will be a little fire in the
Peggoty grate and I can shut the door and sit down and think clearly."

But it wasn't the nursery. As they passed its closed door she could
hear the wrangle of many voices, a baby's fretful cry and the hurrying
whir of other sewing machines. The frowsy woman opened the door at the
head of the stairs. The-three-dollar-a-week-room was the hall bedroom.
The small room where Mademoiselle D'Ormy's bed had been wont to stand
in the old days--with the door left ajar so that Felicia would not be
frightened when she awoke in the night.

With the door to the adjoining room closed it looked twice as narrow
as she remembered it. And it was not a nice clean room. It held an old
iron bed and a pine table and a cheap wicker rocking chair. Yet
Felicia could almost have kissed the dingy walls for they were covered
with exactly the same droll paper that had always decorated them--the
paper on which the oft repeated group of fat faced shepherdesses
danced about their innumerable May poles and alternating with these
perpetual merry makers were the methodical flocks of lambs. Spang over
the middle of the space back of the bed was the discolored spot where
she had thrown the large and dripping bath sponge.

She felt suddenly very small and very, very helpless--she was utterly