EVERYBODY in Mercer knew Sara Wharton; in the first place, she was Edward Wharton’s daughter; the Edward Wharton of the Wharton & Blair Company, whose great Rolling and Smelting Mills darken Mercer’s sky with vast folds of black smoke, and give employment to two thirds of Mercer’s population. In the second place, she was a very charming young lady, who was too pretty to pass unnoticed when her victoria went rolling along the river road on fine afternoons. And in the third place, she was the president of two girls’ clubs, and the organizer of the Boys’ Alliance, and the Young Men’s Literary Association, and the founder of the Y. W. C. T. U., and the kindly autocrat of all Mercer’s rough, grimy, under-fed young people. She was a sweet-hearted, wholesome-minded, impulsive, dear child; the kind of girl who loved a party just as much, and planned her pretty dresses just as anxiously, and adored her father and mother just as unreasonably, as though she had never heard of a committee, and was indifferent to the Cause of Humanity. All Mercer knew her, and believed in her; and so when, one gray November afternoon, she was seen to go quietly up the steps of a certain house on Baker Street--a house which decent folk affected to ignore when they passed it by at midday, but at which they glanced curiously after nightfall--when Sara Wharton went into this house, those who chanced to see her said only, “Well! what won’t that girl do next?” The woman who answered her ring opened the door scarcely more than a crack, and peered out at her sourly. “I want to see Nellie Sherman,” said Miss Wharton. “There’s no person by that name here,” the woman answered. “Let me in, please,” Sara Wharton said. She put her hand against the door, which yielded a little and then stopped; the woman inside had braced her foot against it. “She ain’t in.” “I will wait until she comes, then,” returned the young lady pleasantly. “I don’t know why you’re comin’ here lookin’ for a girl,” the woman cried out, in sudden, shrewish rage; “this is a respectable house; there’s no Sherman girl here!” “Let me in at once,” said Sara Wharton, “or I shall get a policeman, and have a warrant served. I know Nellie Sherman lives here, and I want to see her. You had better let me in without further talk. I am Miss Wharton.” “I don’t care if you are Queen Victoria,” the keeper of the house declared angrily; “well, you can come in, though there ain’t no Nellie Sherman here; there’s a Nettie Sherman,--if she’s the girl you’re looking for.” “Tell her I want to see her, please.” “She’s up in her room. You can go up.” Miss Wharton’s instant’s hesitation made her add, “There ain’t nobody there.” The halls and stairs were nearly dark; one or two frowzy heads peered over the banisters, and drew back quickly; there was a loud guffaw of laughter from behind a closed door, and all the air was heavy with the reek of stale tobacco.