“What I’ll do when that’s gone I don’t know,” said she, commencing to cry again, “unless I find George. I won’t live on _you_, though, ma’am,” she said, lifting her face up quickly out of her handkerchief; “I won’t, indeed. I’ll go to the poorhouse first. But——” Then she cried worse than before, and I cried, too, and took her in my arms, and called her a poor little thing, and told her she shouldn’t go to any poorhouse, but should stay with me and be my daughter. I don’t know how I came to say it, for, goodness knows, I find it hard enough to keep out of the poorhouse myself, but I did say it, and I meant it, too. Her things were all in a little valise, and she soon had the room to rights, and when I went up again in a few minutes to carry her a cup of tea, she pointed to her husband’s picture which she had hung on the wall, and asked me if I didn’t think he was very handsome. I said yes, but I’m glad she looked at the tea instead of me, for I believe she’d seen by my face that I didn’t like her George. The fact is, men look very differently to their wives or sweethearts than they do to older people and to boarding-house keepers. There was nothing vicious about George Perry’s face, but if he’d been a boarder of mine, I’d have insisted on my board promptly—not for fear of his trying to cheat me, but because if he saw anything else he wanted, he’d spend his money without thinking of what he owed. I felt so certain that he’d got into some mischief or trouble, and was afraid or ashamed to come back to his wife, that I risked the price of three ribs of prime roasting beef in the following “Personal” advertisement: “GEORGE P.—Your wife don’t know anything about it, and is dying to see you. Answer through Personals.” But no answer came, and his wife grew more and more poorly, and I couldn’t help seeing what was the matter with her. Then her money ran out, and she talked of going away, but I wouldn’t hear of it. I just took her to my own room, which was the back parlor, and told her she wasn’t to think again of going away; that she was to be my daughter, and I would be her mother, until she found George again. I was afraid, for _her_ sake, that it meant we were to be with each other for ever, for there was no sign of George. She wrote to his family in the West, but _they_ hadn’t heard anything from him or about him, and they took pains not to invite her there, or even to say anything about giving her a helping hand. There was only one thing left to do, and that was to pray, and pray I _did_, more constantly and earnestly than I ever did before, although, the good Lord knows there _have_ been times, about quarter-day, when I haven’t kept much peace before the Throne.