“Never mind,” Ada said, with her heart growing sadder every minute. “It’s a good thing not to be at school with girls who are so vulgar.” Ada’s own rich friends had also disappeared in a marvellous fashion. It is true she had left her old home so suddenly, and had to avoid seeing people whom it would be painful to meet in her altered circumstances, so much that, perhaps, they were not altogether to blame. She had been working for some months at Madame Maude’s now, and she had found that she had very little time in her busy life for musing over the faithlessness of her rich friends. Her mother’s mental condition had not improved, and she had not had a single line from her father. He had left the country to avoid disgrace as well as ruin. The cold weather had come, and Ada was feeling the hardship of walking every morning and evening to her business. It was a long way, and the girl’s constitution was not suited to the strain made upon it. The people in the boarding-house had watched her growing slighter and paler as the weeks passed, and her eyes had grown feverishly bright. Marjory was a selfish, peevish child, who did not do what she could to help her sister. “She’s not worth Ada’s little finger!” the fat boarder would exclaim, when the child deceived her sister by making friends with girls that Ada had asked her not to know, and had spent Ada’s hardly-earned money on candies, and iced-cream sodas. “She’s her father’s own child, that’s what she is, and Ada Nicoli’s too fine a girl to kill herself for that saucy brat.” But Ada could see no fault in Marjory, for Marjory was clever enough to deceive her. And so while Ada was toiling night and day to bring her up as a refined and cultivated child, Marjory was hankering after the society of vulgar companions, and paying little attention to her lessons. But little Sadie was a sweet and loving child, and her devotion to Ada was touching. At the boarding-house dinner-table it was a pretty sight to see Ada Nicoli with a little sister on each side of her. She was the prettiest, daintiest creature herself, and it was her greatest joy to see people look with admiration at her two children, as she called them. They were always wonderfully clean and freshly dressed. “How long can she keep it up?” the fat boarder said. “She fairly amazes me, that girl. She had never even brushed her own hair a year and a half ago, and now she’s keeping these two children so sweet and fresh, and bringing them up so well, too. They are a deal nicer children than when they first came, but it’s wearing her out—that light burning up in her room till past twelve at night, and she’s up by seven o’clock in the morning.”