"Do you leave your shoes outside the door at night? I should never remember. The first day I was here I made my own bed! The chambermaid nearly fell over. "Do tell me a lot to write to auntie (that's my stepmother); I have always told her everything I'm thinking about, and now it will be rather difficult for I only think now about the stage and Cousin Julia and you, Elsie-Honey. I hope you think of me?" CHAPTER XIII "Oh, Miss Moss, I think I can come earlier to-morrow afternoon and stay longer," said little Mattie Howe eagerly. "It's been such a good week for drying clothes that mother's way ahead on her work, and she'll mind the baby herself. Charles Augustus is going to take back the last load this afternoon with his cart." "That's nice for you, Mattie, but I shan't be here. Miss Stewart's coming back to-morrow," replied Elsie. The child's bright, thin little face clouded. "Oh, dear, oh, dear, these changes are most too much for me, I declare!" she cried. "I mean changes-_back_ is. The change that brought you here, Miss Moss, was just sweet. Only I wish it had turned into a _stay_." Elsie drew the little thing close to her. At the moment she herself almost wished it had been a _stay_. "I wonder if that's my _hard_," prattled the child. "Mother says everybody, even rich people, have hard things to bear. Do you bleeve so, Miss Moss?" Elsie looked startled. "Why, Mattie, I hardly know," she faltered. "Ye-es, I suppose every one does, really." "Even you, Miss Moss?" Elsie couldn't answer. On a sudden that first day she and Elsie Moss had been together came back to her. She recalled Elsie's fresh grief for the death of her mother and her own sense of remissness, and the class motto that signified through hardships to the stars. Since she had been at Enderby, things had been disagreeable enough almost to make up for her former immunity. And yet, she hadn't been here ten days, and she didn't really have to endure it. Furthermore, she was to escape from it very shortly. "No, Mattie, I don't believe I have had so much that is hard as most people have," she owned. "You are like the princess, you see," murmured the child. "But I s'pose you feel awfully sorry about your auntie being so poorly? When mother was sick once I felt as bad _here_ as if I had the stomachache hard." Elsie evaded the issue by hoping politely that the little girl's mother was quite well now. "Oh, yes, Miss Moss, and does four peopleses' washings besides our own," Mattie declared. "Father works steady most of the time, but there's five of us, counting the baby, and--sometimes he gets drunk. Not so very often, he doesn't, but nobody can ever tell when he will and when he won't, so mother has to help out. Well, I must go now. When will I see you?"