was impossible for her to travel alone.

At this juncture Rose was called upon to act as nurse and companion in a
friendly way. She seized the opportunity hungrily as a way out of her present
trouble; but, knowing what Mrs. Brooks's temper was in time of health, she
could see clearly what it was likely to prove when pain and anguish wrung the
brow.

Rose had been in Boston now for some weeks, and she was sitting in the Joy
Street boarding-house,--Joy Street, forsooth! It was nearly bedtime, and she
was looking out upon a huddle of roofs and back yards, upon a landscape filled
with clothes-lines, ash-barrels, and ill-fed cats. There were no sleek country
tabbies, with the memory in their eyes of tasted cream, nothing but city-born,
city-bred, thin, despairing cats of the pavement, cats no more forlorn than
Rose herself.

She had "seen Boston," for she had accompanied Mrs. Brooks in the horse-cars
daily to the two different temples of healing where that lady worshiped and
offered sacrifices. She had also gone with Maude Arthurlena to Claude
Merrill's store to buy a pair of gloves, and had overheard Miss Dix (the
fashionable "lady assistant" before mentioned) say to Miss Brackett of the
ribbon department, that she thought Mr. Merrill must have worn his blinders
that time he stayed so long in Edgewood. This bit of polished irony was
unintelligible to Rose at first, but she mastered it after an hour's
reflection. She was n't looking her best that day, she knew; the cotton
dresses that seemed so pretty at home were common and countrified here, and
her best black cashmere looked cheap and shapeless beside Miss Dix's
brilliantine. Miss Dix's figure was her strong point, and her dressmaker was
particularly skillful in the arts of suggestion, concealment, and revelation.
Beauty has its chosen backgrounds. Rose in white dimity, standing knee deep in