On and on we trudged, our arms aching from the satchels, and, much of the way, harrowed by uncertainty. Finally someone told us we were nearing the street in which the Y. W. C. A. was located. How good it was to spy that sign, and how like a shelter the huge building was as it loomed before us! The street was narrow and dismal (it was even on a sunshiny day) and on that dark day looked especially unpromising, but our goal was reached; our strength and courage were well-nigh spent. Shelter, refuge--what meaning in those words, and how soon we had learned the need of them in this big, strange, rainy Boston! The girl who answered the door-bell, a slow-moving, stolid creature, replying to our request to see the Superintendent, said that she was at dinner; that we would have to wait. It was then after two in the afternoon. Of course we would wait; we asked for nothing better. We volunteered that we had come to engage room and board. “I’m sorry, but the house is full,” she said. Belle dropped into a chair. She had gone through so much! Her vaunted courage was proving a broken reed. I stood there, desperate, not knowing which way to turn. On the way thither it had gradually dawned upon me that Belle’s courage was rapidly oozing. I had had to exchange satchels with her and carry her heavier one (though she was taller and larger than I), as she had declared she could carry it no farther. It was a novel position for me--to be the leader; but we tacitly changed places during that long rainy walk. I looked at Belle, a forlorn heap in the chair. I saw that stolid girl, waiting for us to go, since she had told us there was no room--to go out in the rain, no shelter in view! I felt the humiliation of our position before the girl who was showing impatience for us to start, but summoned enough spunk to say, “Please tell the Superintendent we would like to see her when she is at liberty.” Leaving us with the parting shot that “Every room in the house is taken,” she went away.