"The point is," said the young woman, "never to spend any time in self-pity and never mention one of whatever afflictions may have been apportioned to your individual self. The first takes your strength and spoils any good work you might do. The second is a bore to your friends and destruction to self-respect. In the first grip of things it is possible one may send up a howl. But at that or any other time, no matter what the impulse, Don't!" Was she a young woman after all? For, as she brought out the "Don't!" staccato, I looked again. Really she seemed more like a nice boy, well up in athletics, and as far on in general college work as athletics permit. Her hair was short, cut close to her head, yet curly, and though rather a dark brown, yet showing gold where little tendrils had their way, here and there, behind an ear or on her slender neck. Her hands were small, of course, for she was a Southern woman, generations of whom had no need to use their hands in any coarsening work, yet could and did use them in delicate cookery, preserving, and the like, and knew every secret of cutting and generally overseeing the garments for a plantation. Delicately formed, straight as a dart and with the alert expression of a champion tennis player, she stood at the gate into the chicken-yard, and smiled a delightful smile. "I shouldn't tell you one word," she said, "if you hadn't come from so old a friend. Oh, privately I would tell anyone interested, but printing is another matter. It will help, you say. I'm sure I don't know. Perhaps, but I somehow seem to think most find out for themselves, perhaps by a good many experiments, just what to do. But I will tell you just how it began with me. Nellie has told you, I don't doubt, that I was left a widow with three children. We had lived in town, after my marriage, in a rented house. When my husband died and I presently summed up my capital, it was, first, the children, then, not quite two hundred dollars left in the bank after the expenses of the long sickness and the funeral were paid. Added to this were nine hens and a rooster that I had kept at the end of the little garden at the back of the house, our cat and dog and about a fortnight's supplies in the pantry. Our clothes, too, were in fair amount and order. That was all. Lots of people came to condole with me and tell me what to do, but not one made what seemed to me a really practical suggestion. I knew what I could do, or thought I did, which amounts to the same thing, if you really go ahead and do it. I did it. "The first thing was to move into the country, where I had longed to have the children. It isn't country now exactly, for the station is not far away, but the house was out of repair, and I had the option of buying it at the end of the year, if I wanted it then. The owner couldn't do much and was glad to think it might be off his hands, and I took it for eighty dollars a year--this to include a few repairs.