"I worked out," she said. "I made a dollar and a half a week running errands, and taking care of a sick lady vacations, and nights after school. Grandma had that shock, and Grandpa's back troubled him. He tried to get work but he couldn't. He did all he could taking care of Grandma, and tending the garden. They hated to have me work out, but there was nobody else to." "A family of three can't live on a dollar and a half a week." "Yes, sir, they can, if they manage." "Where were your neighbors all this time, Eleanor? You don't mean to tell me that the good, kindly people of Cape Cod would have stood by and let a little girl like you support a family alone and unaided. It's preposterous." "The neighbors didn't know. They thought Uncle Amos left us something. Lots of Cape Cod children work out. They thought that I did it because I wanted to." "I see," said David gravely. The wheel of their cab became entangled in that of a smart delivery wagon. He watched it thoughtfully. Then he took off his glasses, and polished them. "Through a glass darkly," he explained a little thickly. He was really a very _young_ young man, and once below the surface of what he was pleased to believe a very worldly and cynical manner, he had a profound depth of tenderness and human sympathy. Then as they jogged on through the Fifty-ninth Street end of the Park, looking strangely seared and bereft from the first blight of the frost, he turned to her again. This time his tone was as serious as her own. "Why did you stop working out, Eleanor?" he asked. "The lady I was tending died. There wasn't nobody else who wanted me. Mrs. O'Farrel was a relation of hers, and when she came to the funeral, I told her that I wanted to get work in New York if I could,--and then last week she wrote me that the best she could do was to get me this place to be adopted, and so--I came." "But your grandparents?" David asked, and realized almost as he spoke that he had his finger on the spring of the tragedy. "They had to take help from the town." The child made a brave struggle with her tears, and David looked away quickly. He knew something of the temper of the steel of the New England nature; the fierce and terrible pride that is bred in the bone of the race. He knew that the child before him had tasted of the bitter waters of humiliation in seeing her kindred "helped" by the town. "Going out to work," he understood, had brought the family pride low, but taking help from the town had leveled it to the dust.