She looked down suddenly at the broken toy in her hand. "I will stay here more," she said. "It is better here. There is nothing else! And if I were a good woman I should want nothing else. If I had only not spoken to Agnes,--that was the mistake; if she will only forget it! _Some_ one should be happy--_some_ one! It will be Agnes." She got up and went into the children's room, and knelt down by Janey's bed, laying the toy on the coverlet. She put her arms around the child and spoke her name. "Janey!" she said. "Janey!" The child stirred, opened her eyes, and put an arm sleepily about her neck. "I said my prayers," she murmured. "God bless mamma and papa--and everybody! God bless Uncle Philip!" Bertha laid her face near her upon the pillow. "Yes," she said, brokenly. "You belong to me and I belong to you. I will stay here, Janey--with you." CHAPTER XXXIII. Sometimes during the winter, when she glanced around her parlor on the evenings of her receptions Bertha felt as if she was in a waking dream,--so many people of whom she seemed to know nothing were gathered about her; she saw strange faces on every side; a new element had appeared, which was gradually crowding out the old, and she herself felt that she was almost a stranger in it. Day by day, and by almost imperceptible degrees at first, various mysterious duties had devolved upon her. She had found herself calling at one house because the head of it was a member of a committee, at another because its mistress was a person whose influence over her husband it would be well to consider; she had issued an invitation here because the recipients must be pleased, another there because somebody was to be biassed in the right direction. The persons thus to be pleased and biassed were by no means invariably interesting. There was a stalwart Westerner or so, who made themselves almost too readily at home; an occasional rigid New Englander, who suspected a lack of purpose in the atmosphere; and a stray Southerner, who exhibited a tendency towards a large and rather exhaustive gallantry. As a rule, too, Bertha was obliged to admit that she found the men more easily entertained than the women, who were most of them new to their surroundings, and privately determined to do themselves credit and not be imposed upon by appearances; and when this was not the case were either timorously overpowered by a sense of their inadequacy to the situation, or calmly intrenched behind a shield of impassive composure, more discouraging than all else. It was not always easy to enliven such material: to be always ready with the right thing to say and do; to understand, as by inspiration, the intricacies of every occasion and the requirements of every mental condition, and while Bertha spared no effort, and used her every gift to the best of her ability, the result, even when comparatively successful, was rather productive of exhaustion, mental and physical.