“Aunt Pledger!” and Fanny, or Sherry, as she was usually called, laughed a low, rippling laugh as she leaned against the door-jamb and fanned herself with the paper. “I have never been able to make you understand that Aunt Pledger isn’t a swell woman, if she does live in New York. Her house is away down town on a side street, and her furniture the same she had when she was married years and years ago. She keeps one girl, Huldah, and she is gone half the time, leaving Aunt Pledger to open the door herself and do lots of things. I know she has plenty of money, but is close, and she don’t care what we do to get a living, if it is respectable and we don’t come upon her. When father died last summer and she came to the funeral, didn’t she ask us both what we intended to do, or what we could do, and when I told her I couldn’t do a blessed thing, unless it was housework, didn’t she say, ‘Better that than do nothing and expect to be cared for by others. Young people succeed better who rely on themselves.’ I believe she was afraid we might ask her for help. Little we would get. I know she had me in New York two weeks, and took me everywhere, and she was very kind to me. But that was the first attention she ever showed us, and I don’t believe she would have done that if it hadn’t been for Miss Saltus, whom she met on some charitable work, and who spoke of us and said, ‘The next time either of your nieces are in New York let me know; I’d like to call upon them.’ After that Aunt Pledger invited me and did the handsome thing, for she never does a thing by halves, and then Mr. Saltus came to us in the opera-box and was glad to see me, and that helped. She is an awful good woman, of course,—goes to church twice every Sunday, rain or shine, and half supports a society for the prevention of cruelty to children and animals; but she believes in letting people take care of themselves, if they can. Her pride will not be hurt because I hire out as a waitress. I don’t know enough to teach as you do, but I can wash dishes and wait upon table, and earn some money and not let you be the only bread-winner. Then I shall enjoy immensely being Mr. What’s-his-name’s waitress, and know I am somebody else just as good as he is. He is the man who came to Aunt Pledger’s when I was there, and asked if she ever knew old Mr. Marsh. I nearly broke the window trying to see him as he left the house.” “Young?” Kate asked, and Sherry replied: “Yes, and good looking, judging from the back of his head and the fit of his coat. Uncle Pledger knows about him as he does about all the smart set, although he’s not in it. He is just an old-time New Yorker, who has lived in the city fifty years and seen the rise and fall of everybody, and knows everybody by reputation. He might live uptown in one of those handsome brown stones, but, like Aunt Pledger, prefers to stay where he is, leaving the city to roll on as it pleases.”