“You set still, I tell you. You are tuckered out,” Miss Hansford insisted, beginning to take the water up in pails and stopping between times to talk to Elithe and ask about her journey. “You come in the common car all the way and hain’t had your clothes off since you left home! What’d you do that for? I sent money for a sleeper,” she exclaimed, setting down her pail so suddenly that some of the water was spilled on the floor. “I know you sent it, and father and mother wanted me to take it, but they needed it so much that I made them keep it. Artie must have some stockings and Thede some shoes and mother hasn’t had a new dress in three years,” Elithe explained. “My land!” was all Miss Hansford replied, as she went up the stairs with her pail, but to herself she said: “Poor as Job’s turkey, I knew they were. No new dress in three years; that’s hard for Lucy Potter, who used to be so fond of jewgaws. The girl’s all right, poor thing. The dirt must be an inch thick on her. I’ll bring up another pail full and get her a whole bar of Sweet Home soap. She’ll need it.” When her bath was ready Elithe followed her aunt up the stairs into the room designed for her. “Oh, how lovely! It rests me just to look at it,” she said. “I’m glad you like it. I thought you would. Paul called it the white room, and had the roses sent over from their place. He suggested the lilies, too,” Miss Hansford replied, enjoying Elithe’s appreciation of everything, as she buried her face first in the roses and then in the lilies, scarcely knowing which she liked the better. Both were exquisite and both a little sweeter because Paul Ralston had sent one and suggested the other. There was a call from below, and Miss Hansford hurried down to find the expressman with Elithe’s trunk, which she made him put down outside while she swept it with a broom, brushed it with a brush, and dusted it with feathers. “Pretty well knocked to pieces,” the man said, but Miss Hansford did not answer. She had recognized the trunk as having been her own, which she had given to Roger when a boy, and now it had come back to her, “battered and banged and old just as I am,” she thought, as she unknotted the rope tied around it and bade the man carry it to Elithe’s room. The bath, which Elithe enjoyed so much, refreshed and invigorated her, but did not remove the drowsiness stealing over her. It was five nights since her head had touched a pillow, and the sight of the white bed was a temptation she could not resist. She had slipped on a loose, white Mother Hubbard, made from an immense linen sheet which had been sent in a missionary box and utilized first for her mother and then for herself.