And she turned inquiringly to me. I told her who I was, and then inspected Mrs. Rogers curiously, and wondered to find her so different from Gertie. She spoke very well and appeared well, but showed at once the class to which she belonged; nor did she make pretensions to anything else than she really was,—a plain, sensible woman, who had come to America to better herself and be near Norah, her cousin. She wanted work, she said, and asked what the probabilities were of her obtaining employment in Hampstead, either as plain sewer or dressmaker, or both. Of course, I heard about the lost money in the bank, and received the impression that she had seen better days. Everybody who comes from the old country has, but that was natural, and I liked her on the whole, and thought her a woman of great tact and observation, and promised her my plain sewing and my influence if she pleased me. She was very anxious to send Gertie to school at once, she said, and the next day she sat in my school-room in her dainty dress of blue, with her white-ruffled apron, and her auburn hair rippling all over her finely-shaped, intellectual head. I walked home with her that night, and found Mrs. Rogers in a great deal of trouble about the bedstead and the bureau, which seemed so out of place in the cottage. “Where did they come from? Did the other tenants use them?” she asked, and as I did not see fit to enlighten her, she finally determined to store them away in the woodshed until Mr. Godfrey came. “I am able to furnish a few rooms decently well myself,” she said; and three days after, when I called on my way from school, Gertie took me to her room and asked me how I liked it. It was the same Heloise Fordham used to occupy, and it seemed as if she was there again at my side, as I stood looking at the pretty ingrain carpet and the single bed, with its snow-white draperies, the low chair near the window, and the table for Gertie’s work, and the swinging-shelf for her books. “It is a pretty room,” I said, “and it looks as it did when Heloise was here.” “Who?” Gertie asked, sweeping her hair back from her forehead, just as I had seen Heloise do so many times. “Who did you say used to be here?” “Heloise Fordham, a young girl about my age, or a little older, whose mother occupied this cottage twelve or thirteen years ago,” I replied; and Gertie rejoined: “Why, that is my name, too!” “Is it?” I asked, and she rejoined: “Yes, Gertrude Heloise. I write it Gertrude H. for short. Don’t you know?” I did not know, and I had no suspicion of that which, had I known it then, would have taken my senses away, I verily believe.