distinction as a well-to-do boarder, he would have, in her eyes, nothing to single him out; she would respect his scholarship, but regarding it as a quality peculiar to certain men; and without the knowledge that it was in part an accident of circumstance. She would see beyond it; she would never be prostrate before it. But the distant vision of the free life was not Mrs. Bailey’s vision; there was something there she could not be made to understand, and would in any way there were words that tried to express it, certainly not approve. Yet why did it come so strongly here in her room? The sense of it was here, somewhere in their intercourse, but she was unconscious of it..... Miriam plumbed about in the clear centre--where without will or plan or any shapely endeavour in her life, she was yet so strangely accepted and indulged. Mrs. Bailey was glancing back at her from the depths of her abode, her face busy in control of the rills of laughter sparkling in her eyes and keeping, Miriam knew, as she moved, hovering, and saw the fostering light they shed upon the world, perpetual holiday; the reassuring inexhaustible substance of Mrs. Bailey’s being. “It’s Sissie I worry about,” said Mrs. Bailey. Miriam attended curiously. “She’s like her dear father; keeps herself to herself and goes on; she’s a splendid little woman in the house; but I feel she ought to be doing something more.” “She’s awfully capable” said Miriam. “She is. There’s nothing she can’t turn her hand to. She’ll have the lock off a door and mend it and put it on again and put in a pane of glass neater than a workman and no mess or fuss.” Miriam sat astonished before the expanding accumulation of qualities. “I don’t know how I should spare her; but she’s not satisfied here; I’ve been wondering if I couldn’t manage to put her into the typing.” “There isn’t much prospect there” recited Miriam, “the supply is bigger than the demand.” “That is so” assented Mrs. Bailey; “but I see it like this; where there’s a will there’s a way and one has to make a beginning.” Mrs. Bailey had made up her mind. Quite soon Sissie would know typewriting; a marketable accomplishment; she would rank higher in the world than a dental secretary; a lady typist with a knowledge of French. That would be her status in an index. No doubt in time she would learn shorthand. She would go capably about, proud of her profession; with a home to live in, comfortably well off on fifteen shillings a week; one of the increasing army of confident illiterate young women in the city; no, Sissie would not be showy; she would bring life into some office, amongst men as illiterate as herself; as soon as she had picked up “yours to hand” she would be reliable and valuable..... Sissie, with a home, and without putting forth any particular effort, would have a place in the world.....