* * * * *

A few days after the newness of Cheyenne had worn off a little, Gloria
sat in the window of her hotel room writing a letter. It had come to her
suddenly that she would write to the District Nurse. It would at any
rate be something interesting to do, and if the letter elicited an
answer, how very interesting that would be! What kind of letters did
District Nurses write?

Gloria had gone back, in convenient interstices of her new life in
this strange city, to mild musings on streets where poverty dwelt
undisguised. At this distance, Dinney and little Hunkie were faint
wraiths rather than realities.

Gloria's musings now were tinted with a comfortable impersonality that
robbed them of the power to sting. It was more as if she had recently
read a story full of pathos, whose chief characters were named Hunkie
and Dinney, and whose background was a dreary street. She would tell the
story to the District Nurse and perhaps evoke a sequel to it from her.

"_Dear Miss Winship_: My uncle and aunt spirited me away the next day,
and here I am in this 'Undiscovered Country'! Do you mind if I write
you? You will be too busy to answer. Maybe you won't even have time
to read it! I found out about one of your sick persons that same
day--Dinney's mother. He seemed almost proud that she had consumption,
the poor little boy! He had the baby with him. I never saw such a
perfectly dreadful street. The idea of calling it Pleasant Street!
Somebody ought to climb up and print an 'Un' before it, and even that
wouldn't be bad enough!