Sadly Betty Ashton glanced about the familiar room. The portraits of her New England ancestors appeared to gaze coldly and reproachfully down upon her. They had not been of the stuff of which failures are made. Her grand piano was closed and dusty, the window blinds were partly pulled down, and although a fire was laid in the grate, it was not burning. Dust, cold and an unaccustomed atmosphere of neglect enveloped everything. With a lifting of her head and a tightening of her lips that gave her face a new expression, the girl suddenly pulled open a table drawer and began fiercely to polish the top of the piano while she talked. "There is no reason why I should allow this place to look so dismal just because things have gone wrong with my efforts to keep boarders and continue my work at school. As no one is coming to see me I can't afford a fire, but I'll open the piano and place Esther's song, 'The Soul's Desire,' on the music rack, just as though she were at home to sing it for me. Dick's dull old books shall lie here on the table where he used to leave them, near this red rose that John Everett brought me this morning. Somehow the rose makes me think of Polly. It is so radiant. How curious that certain persons suggest certain colors! Now Polly is often pale as a ghost, and yet red always makes me recall her." A few moments afterwards and Betty moved toward the front window and stood there staring out into the street, too deep in thought to be actually conscious of what she was doing. She had changed in the past six months of struggle with poverty and work beyond her strength. There were shadows under her gray eyes and worried lines about the corners of her mouth. Instead of being slim as formerly, she was undeniably so thin that even the folds of her delicate crepe dress could not wholly disguise it. It was not that Mrs. Ashton and Betty had spent this lonely day in their old home, because their former friends had neglected them. Indeed, they had had invitations to Thanksgiving dinners from half a dozen sources. But Mrs. Ashton had not been well in several months and was today too ill for her daughter to leave her. The two women were now entirely alone in the house. One by one their boarders had deserted them, and the previous week they had even felt compelled to give up the old cook, who had been in the service of the Ashton family for twenty years. At first Betty saw nothing to attract her attention in the street outside--not a single passer-by. It was odd how quiet and cold the world seemed with her mother asleep in one of the far-away rooms upstairs and other persons evidently too much interested in indoor amusements to care for wandering through the dull town.