It was on the following day that a less important member of society than Miss Minster resolved to also pay a visit to the milliner’s shop.

Ben Lawton’s second wife—for she herself scarcely thought of “Mrs. Lawton” as a title appertaining to her condition of ill-requited servitude—had become possessed of some new clothes. Their monetary value was not large, but they were warm and respectable, with bugle trimming on the cloak, and a feather rising out of real velvet on the bonnet; and they were new all together at the same time, a fact which impressed her mind by its novelty even more than did the inherent charm of acquisition.

To go out in this splendid apparel was an obvious duty. Where to go was less clear. The notion of going shopping loomed in the background of Mrs. Lawton’s thoughts for a while, but in a formless and indistinct way, and then disappeared again. Her mind was not civilized enough to assimilate the idea of loitering around among the stores when she had no money with which to buy anything.

Gradually the conception of a visit to her step-Jessica took shape in her imagination.

Perhaps the fact that she owed her new clothes to the bounty of this girl helped forward this decision. There was also a certain curiosity to see the child who was Ben’s grandson, and so indirectly related to her, and for whose anomalous existence there was more than one precedent in her own family, and who might turn out to resemble her own little lost Alonzo. But the consideration which primarily dictated her choice was that there was no other place to go to.

Her reception by Jessica, when she finally found her way by Samantha’s complicated directions to the shop, was satisfactorily cordial. She was allowed to linger for a time in the show-room, and satiate bewilderment over the rich plumes, and multi-colored velvets and ribbons there displayed; then she was taken into the domestic part of the building, where she was asked like a real visitor to take off her cloak and bonnet, and sat down to enjoy the unheard-of luxury of seeing somebody else getting a “meal of victuals” ready. The child was playing by himself back of the stove with some blocks. He seemed to take no interest in his new relation, and Mrs. Lawton saw that if Alonzo had lived he would not have looked like this boy, who was blonde and delicate, with serious eyes and flaxen curls, and a high, rather protuberant forehead.

The brevet grandmother heard with surprise from Lucinda that this five-year-old child already knew most of his letters. She stole furtive glances at him after this, from time to time, and as soon as Jessica had gone out into the store and closed the door she asked:

“Don’t his head look to you like water on the brain?”

Lucinda shook her head emphatically: “He’s healthy enough,” she said.

“And his name’s Horace, you say?”

“Yes, that’s what I said,” replied the girl.

Mrs. Lawton burned to ask what other name the lad bore, but the peremptory tones of her daughter warned her off. Instead she remarked: “And so he’s been livin’ in Tecumseh all this while? They seem to have brung him up pretty good—teachin’ him his A B C’s and curlin’ his hair.”

“He had a good home. Jess paid high, and the people took a liking to him,” said Lucinda.

“I s’pose they died or broke up housekeepin’,” tentatively suggested Mrs. Lawton.

“No: Jess wanted him here, or thought she did.” Lucinda’s loyalty to her sister prompted her to stop the explanation at this. But she herself had been sorely puzzled and tried by the change which had come over the little household since the night of the boy’s arrival, and the temptation to put something of this into words was too strong to be mastered.

“I wish myself he hadn’t come at all,” she continued from the table where she was at work. “Not but that he’s a good enough young-one, and lots of company for us both, but Jess ain’t been herself at all since she brought him here. It ain’t his fault—poor little chap—but she fetched him from Tecumseh on account of something special; and then that something didn’t seem to come off, and she’s as blue as a whetstone about it, and that makes everything blue. And there we are!”

Lucinda finished in a sigh, and proceeded to rub grease on the inside of her cake tins with a gloomy air.





In the outer shop, Jessica found herself standing surprised and silent before the sudden apparition of a visitor whom she had least of all expected—Miss Kate Minster.

The bell which formerly jangled when the street door opened had been taken off because it interfered with the child’s mid-day sleep, and Jessica herself had been so deeply lost in a brown study where she sat sewing behind the counter that she had not noted the entrance of the young lady until she stood almost within touch. Then she rose hurriedly, and stood confused and tongue-tied, her work in hand. She dropped this impediment when Miss Minster offered to shake hands with her, but even this friendly greeting did not serve to restore her self-command or induce a smile.

“I have a thousand apologies to make for leaving you alone all this while,” said Kate. “But—we have been so troubled of late—and, selfish like, I have forgotten everything else. Or no—I won’t say that—for I have thought a great deal about you and your work. And now you must tell me all about both.”

Miss Minster had seated herself as she spoke, and loosened the boa about her throat, but Jessica remained standing. She idly noted that no equipage and coachman were in waiting outside, and let the comment drift to her tongue. “You walked, I see,” she said.

“Yes,” replied Kate. “It isn’t pleasant to take out the horses now. The streets are full of men out of work, and they blame us for it, and to see us drive about seems to make them angry. I suppose it’s a natural enough feeling; but the boys pelted our coachman with snowballs the other day, while my sister and I were driving, and the men on the corner all laughed and encouraged them. But if I walk nobody molests me.”

The young lady, as she said this with an air of modest courage, had never looked so beautiful before in Jessica’s eyes, or appealed so powerfully to her liking and admiration. But the milliner was conscious of an invasion of other and rival feelings which kept her face smileless and hardened the tone of her voice.

“Yes, the men feel very bitterly,” she said. “I know that from the girls. A good many of them—pretty nearly all, for that matter—have stopped coming here, since the lockout, because your money furnished the Resting House. That shows how strong the feeling is.”

“You amaze me!”

There was no pretence in Miss Kate’s emotion. She looked at Jessica with wide-open eyes, and the astonishment in the gaze visibly softened and saddened into genuine pain. “Oh, I am so sorry!” she said. “I never thought of that. Tell me—what can be done? How can we get that cruel notion out of their heads? I did so truly want to help the girls. Surely there must be some way of making them realize this. The closing of the works, that is a business matter with which I had nothing to do, and which I didn’t approve; but this plan of yours, that was really a pet of mine. It is only by a stupid accident that I did not come here often, and get to know the girls, and show them how interested I was in everything. When Mr. Tracy spoke of you yesterday, I resolved to come at once, and tell you how ashamed I was.”

Jessica’s heart was deeply stirred by this speech, and filled with yearnings of tenderness toward the be............