"I really must go, dear," Evelyn told her with a firmness quite foreign to her fashionable self. "You don't know--you can't guess how necessary it is for me to find some way of earning money. Mother----" her voice shook a little--"isn't at all well; she never was very strong, and our losses have quite--Why, Elizabeth, you would hardly know mother; she's so changed. She just sits by the window, and--looks out; I can't seem to rouse her to--to do anything." Remembering the frail, artificial old lady, with her elaborate toilets and her perpetual aura of rice-powder and sachet, Elizabeth thought this exceedingly probable. "Was it so very bad, Evelyn?" she asked hesitatingly. "You know you only told me----" "We lost nearly everything when the Back-Bay Security Company failed last fall," said Evelyn quietly. "I--couldn't seem to believe it at first. Of course we were never rich; but we had always lived very comfortably--you know how pleasant it was in our little apartment, Elizabeth, with our good Marie to do everything for us, and all our friends." Miss Tripp touched her eyelids delicately with her little lace-edged handkerchief. "I--mustn't cry," she said. "It makes one look so like a fright, and I----. Elizabeth, do you suppose I could get a place to--teach? I do love children so, and they always seem to like me." "What would you teach?" Elizabeth asked, anxiously sympathetic, yet knowing a little more of the ways of the educational world than did Miss Tripp. "You know, Evelyn,--at least I am told--that nearly every teacher has to be a specialist now. You might study kindergartening," she added more hopefully. Miss Tripp shook her head. "No; I couldn't do that. It would take too long, and we should have plenty of time to--starve, I fancy, before----. But what nonsense I'm talking! I must start out this minute; I have an appointment at Whitcher's Teacher's Agency this morning. They told me yesterday that a man--a school principal--was coming there to hire a primary teacher. I'm sure I could do that; don't you think I could, Elizabeth?--Just to teach the children how to read and write and do little sums on their slates. I shall say I can anyway." She waved her hand to her friend as she went bravely away down the snowy street, and Elizabeth turned back to her children, feeling a new and unfamiliar sense of gratitude for the warm home nest, with its three turbulent birdlings. It was Saturday, and the children could not be dispatched to kindergarten as on other mornings of the week. It was also baking-day, and bread and rolls were in slow process of rising to their appointed size in the chilly kitchen. Elizabeth was frugally looking over the contents of her larder with a view to a "picked-up" luncheon, when she heard a small yet distinct knock on the back door. She opened it upon Robbie Stanford, dancing with impatience on the snowy step.