so had that dear person suspected Gloria's designs against Un-Pleasant
Street. These designs were unbosomed in a second letter to the District
Nurse.




CHAPTER IV.

Gloria's second letter to the District Nurse ran thus:

"_Dear Miss Winship_: I keep thinking of those dreadful houses. Every
time I look in a daily paper I expect to read that one of them has
tumbled down, and I'm afraid it will be Dinney's house, where that poor,
sick woman is--or Straps' house! They _ought_ to tumble down, every one
of them, but not till they are emptied of their poor loads of humanity.
If they are half as bad inside as they are outside! I keep and _keep_
thinking of them. Think of a girl named Rose being in a house like that,
and another girl with Rose for her middle name in a beautiful, great
hotel here, or Uncle Em's lovely house at home--both of them Roses. It
isn't fair!

"Do you know, I have a plan, but I'm 'most afraid to divulge it--I
wouldn't to Uncle Em for the world, _yet_! He'd laugh the roof off. He
says women have no heads for business, and as for _girls_!--But if not
heads, I suppose they might have hearts, and the hearts might ache, the
way mine does every time I think of those houses and Straps and Dinney
and Hunkie--and the girl with eyes like mine. Yes, I'll tell you. I
mean to tear down some of those houses--Dinney's, at any rate. Now, go
outdoors and laugh!