So she bought these things, with the five dollars that hung about her neck in a little bag. As we went out the door, she saw a bassinet, all fine whiteness and flowered blue and lace edging. "It's a clothes basket!" she cried excitedly. "Don't you see it is? What's the matter with me making one like that?" She turned to me, laughing as boisterously as I had heard her laugh in the Katytown post-office when more traveling men than usual were sitting outside the door of the Katytown Commercial House. "Land," she said, "when I get back home, I bet I'll have everything but the baby!" I sat beside her in the street-car, and she tried to make a hole in the paper of her parcel to see again the color of the wool she had bought for the little sack. There was thread, too, for the "three-and-five." Lena's eyes were bright and eager. She said little on the way home, and she made no objection to going with me to the flat. When we unrolled the parcel on Mrs. Bingy's dining-room table, and I saw Lena stooping and planning, I thought of the picture that we had left in the little gallery. There was a look in Lena's eyes that I had never seen there before. I heard Mrs. Bingy and her chattering happily over the patterns, and I thought that beauty has many ways of power. Then, the next day, I had a telegram from Mrs. Carney. "Come to see me to-day," she said. "Important." I hurried to her, dreaming, as I had dreamed all night, of whom I might find with her. But she was alone, and in some happy excitement that was beautifully becoming to her, who was usually so grave and absent. "Cosma," she said, "what would you say to leaving the university before you have your degree?" I knew that very well. "I would say," I said, "that I don't care two cents about the degree, if I can get the right position without it." "I hoped you would say that!" she cried. "Then listen: John Ember has asked me to find a secretary for him. Will you go and try for the place?" CHAPTER XV His library had not many books, not many pictures, and no curtains at all. The nine o'clock sun fell across the dull rugs, and some blue and green jars on a shelf shone out as if they were saying something. I waited for him at the hour of the appointment that Mrs. Carney had made for me. And for me some of the magic and the terror of the time were in that she had not told him who I was. When his little Japanese had gone to call him, I sat there in a happiness which made me over, which made the whole world seem like another place. I heard his step in the passage, and I wondered if I was going to be able to speak at all. I rather thought not, until the very moment that I tried. He came toward me, bowing slightly, and motioning me to my chair. I looked at him, with a leaping expectation in my heart, and, I am afraid, in my eyes. His own eyes met mine levelly, courteously, and without a sign of recognition.