It was during the second of her visits home that Miss Lydia Vail died. There was no dreariness of illness or misery of suffering; she died exactly as she had lived, plumply and pleasantly, in the plump and pleasant faith that was hers, and Jane left the middle-aged maid in charge of the elm-shaded, green-shuttered house and went back to New York with a grief which was more pensive than poignant. She refused, thereafter, to rent the old home, but loaned it instead, the servant with it, to various and sundry of her city clan,--now the girl who had carried her first playlet to success, now to shabby music students at Mrs. Hills' whom Sarah Farraday was pledged to regale with tea and cheer in the afternoons, now to sad-eyed women of Michael Daragh's recommendation. Sometimes she ran up herself with a little house-party,--down-at-the-heel vaudevilleans, elderly, concert-going ladies from the boarding house, Emma Ellis and another settlement worker--and made an expenditure for food and entertainment which secretly scandalized the ancient maid. She wrote her first slim little novel which was accepted for serial publication and Rodney Harrison insisted that there was the germ of a three-act play in it. She set to work on it and labored harder than ever before in her life, happily, hot-cheeked, shining-eyed, wrote and rewrote and clipped and amplified and smoothed and polished, and one day Sarah Farraday ran over to the Hunter's house with a telegram. "Nannie! It's accepted! Jane's three-act play is accepted! Did you ever in all your born days see such luck? She just can't fail!" Her earnest, blonde face was a little wistful. "I never knew any human being to have so much!" Mrs. Edward R. was herding the Teddy-bear into the coupe and she handed little Sarah Anne to her friend. "Get in, Sally dear, and I'll run you home. I'm taking the children over to Mother Hunter's for the day." She steadied Sarah and her burden to a seat and then tucked herself neatly in, and started her bright vehicle competently. "Well, I don't know.... It's all very fine, of course, but I can think of a good deal she hasn't got!" "Oh, of course ..." said the music teacher. After a moment she sighed. "Poor old Marty.... Well, we can't lead other people's lives for them, can we?" "No, we can't," Mrs. Edward R. admitted, contentedly. She bowled Sarah smoothly back to the burlapped studio in time for the eleven-twenty pupil. * * * * *