I must have looked my astonishment, for she hastened to add:

"Your future I have little concern for. With such capabilities as
yours, you must find work. Why, look at your face!" and she drew me
playfully before the glass. "See the forehead, the mouth, and tell
me you read failure there! But your present is what is doubtful, and
that I can certainly take care of."

"But----" I protested, with a sensation of warmth in my cheeks.

The loveliest smile stopped me before I could utter a word more.

"As you would take care of mine," she completed, "if our positions
were reversed." Then, without waiting for a further demur on my
part, she kissed me, and as if the sweet embrace had made us sisters
at once, drew me to a chair and sat down at my feet. "You know," she
naively murmured, "I am almost rich; I have five hundred dollars
laid up in the bank, and----"

I put my hand over her lips; I could not help it. She was such a
frail little thing, so white and so ethereal, and her poor five
hundred had been earned by such weary, weary work.

"But that is nothing, nothing," I said. "You have a future to
provide for, too, and you are not as strong as I am, if you have
been more successful."

She laughed, then blushed, then laughed again, and impulsively
cried: