“Well, good-by, Miss Sherman,” said the chivalrous James, and gave her a hearty kiss, which made Nellie slap at him with one hand, and say, “Now you stop that!” and go off, still giggling, into the darkness. * * * * * Sara Wharton, upstairs by her fire, had dropped her face in her hands, and was saying to herself, “I must trust her more, and believe in her more! Oh, I am sure she tries--poor little Nellie.” And certainly poor Nellie was not conscious of any lack of trying, so far as the episode with James was concerned. To her, as well as to him, it was very harmless, that kiss in the porch. And really to call such a thing “sin” is to lift it to a level where it does not belong. But probably Sara Wharton was constitutionally unable to understand that. The people who try to make silk purses out of inadequate materials rarely can understand it. IV The Whartons did not get back until April, and the improvement in Sara’s color, and the clear, glad look in her eyes, showed how much she had needed the change. She was all ready for her brave, happy work for other people. Her very first visit was to Nellie’s aunt. When she climbed up to the top tenement, stopping to open a window on a landing half way up, so that the sweet spring air might turn out the odors of the hall-sink, and of the dirt in the corners and on the stairs, she came into Mrs. Sherman’s room a little breathless, but with a soft rose-color on her cheek. “Well!” she called out cheerfully, “here I am again, Mrs. Sherman; how are you; and how is Nellie?” and then she discovered Nellie sitting close to the stove, on which was a tin boiler full of steaming soapy linen, which Mrs. Sherman, bare armed and draggled, pushed down once in a while with a broom-handle. “There!” said Mrs. Sherman, “well! my sakes, Miss Wharton, it do do me good to see you. Look at that there girl!” Nellie sunk her head on her breast and began to cry. Sara was instantly serious. “Is anything wrong?” she said gravely. “Wrong!” cried Mrs. Sherman shrilly. “Well, I guess! I told her I’d keep her till you come home, though she’s a shame to any decent woman. My! what I’ve put up with for that there child!” She put her apron over her head, sobbing and vociferating: “I told her I’d tell you. I ain’t let her out of that door since. I’ll keep her straight now, as long as _I_ live”-- Nellie, her face drawn and pale, sat plucking at the fringe of the shawl about her shoulders, her sullen lips compressed, her eyes cast resolutely down. “Nellie?” Sara said. There was no answer. “What has happened, Nellie?” Silence. “Tell me; I won’t be hard on you, Nellie. Have you--gone wrong again?” Nellie crossed her feet and made no reply. In despair Sara turned again to Mrs. Sherman, who, with tears, declaring first that Nellie should leave her house that night, and then that she would never let her out of her sight, told the shameful fact of another fall;--another reformation.