The next day Mrs. Trevyllan made her call, and returned quite disappointed, and, as I fancied, a little disgusted. Miss Elliston was very sorry, but too much occupied with a dressmaker to see any one, so Mrs. Trevyllan had left her card and the photograph, and retraced her steps with a feeling that she had taken the trouble for nothing, unless she took into consideration the fact that she had at least seen the parlors of Miss Elliston’s home. Beautiful beyond anything I had ever seen they must have been, if her description of them was to be trusted, and I sighed a little as I listened to her glowing account of the carpets, and curtains, and pictures, and rare works of art, and then glanced at my own humble surroundings, and thought how poor I was. Only one pound ten was left in my purse, and there was the doctor’s bill and the two weeks’ rent, to say nothing of a new pair of boots which I must have, for the old pair leaked, and was past being made respectable by any amount of French dressing. Yes, I was very poor; too poor, in fact, to remain idle much longer, and as soon as I was able, I started out in quest of pupils in the place of those I had lost. Remembering the note of Lady Fairfax, I resolved to seek her first, hoping that she had not engaged another teacher for her little girl, notwithstanding the imperative “Come at once, if you care for another scholar.” How well I remember that November day, when, with a leaden sky overhead, muddy sidewalks under foot, and a feeling of snow or rain in the air, I started, in my suit of last year’s gray, which nothing could make new or stylish, but which I did try to freshen a little with clean linen collar and cuffs, and a bright blue necktie in place of the inevitable white one so common then in England. I hunted up, also, an old blue feather which I twisted among the loops of ribbon on my hat, and felt a little flutter of satisfaction when one of the Misses Keith told me how pretty I looked, and how becoming blue was to me. It used to be, when I lived in the roomy old house in Middlesex, and Tom said my eyes were like great robin’s eggs; but that was years and years ago, and I felt so old and changed as I turned into High street, and went down the stairs to the station, and took my seat in a third-class carriage of the under-ground railway. I always traveled third-class in London, but so did hundreds of others far richer than myself, and I did not mind that, or think myself inferior to the people around me, but when at last I found myself ringing the bell at Lady Fairfax’s handsome house, and met the cool stare of the powdered footman, who opened the door to me, and looked as if he wondered at my presumption in ringing there, I felt all my misgivings return, and was painfully conscious of the faded gray dress, the old feather, and the leaky boots, which were wet even with the short distance it had been necessary for me to walk, and which began