It had never occurred to her
that they might thoughtlessly have died or gone elsewhere. Editors and
organists seemed so importantly permanent to the lay mind.
This was indeed being alone in New York! And at the very thought--now
she could guess what it might be like--her one hundred and ninety-six
dollars and twenty-eight cents seemed to be shrinking in the wash.
"Nonsense!" said she, on the elevated again, tearing downtown. "Don't
be a silly. Any one would think you were the leading lady in a
melodrama, turned out of the house without your hat, in a snowstorm
that followed you round the stage like a wasp! You'll be all right.
Miss Ellis told you they _loved_ English girls in New York. Just you
wait till to-morrow, my dear!"
The rest of the day she spent in the frying pan, "pulling herself
together," and "seeing where she stood," a process consisting mostly
of counting her greenbacks and comparing them with their equivalent in
English money. After all, there was not too much time for this mental
adjustment of things, because, being late in October, darkness fell
early, and Miss Hampshire's boarders dined at six-thirty. Promptness
was obligatory if you were a female.
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