"You'll never know, dear, what you've done for a lonely old woman. I
don't know how to thank you."

"Thank _me_--why, I should thank _you_. I have had _such_ a nice time,
and I'm so glad that you like the rooms--Mother said you wouldn't.
Would you like me to come in the morning and see how you are getting
on?"

"Oh, will you? I won't know what to do, you know."

"Yes, I'll love to come and I'll be here early. Good night and happy
dreams!" And she was gone.

When she was alone Drusilla sat before the fire and tried to feel
that it all was true, that it was not some beautiful dream from which
she would waken. She went in retrospect over her past life from the
time when, a little girl, her father dying, she and her mother were
left with no support except the little earned by her mother, who was
the village tailoress. Then when she became older the burden of the
support for the two shifted to her shoulders, her mother seeming to
have lost heart and with it the strength and the desire to make the
grim fight with the wolf that always seemed so near the door. For
years she struggled on, doing the country tailoring, nursing the
sick, helping in families who were too poor to hire expert labor,
missing all the joys that come to the average young girl, as all her
leisure moments from work were given to an ailing mother who seemed
to become more dependent upon her daughter each year for
companionship and strength.