Shaking her head, and swallowing her sobs with an effort, Gabriella rose to her feet.  “I’m just tired out, that’s all,” she said, strangely humble and deprecating.

“You must have been working too hard.  It ain’t right.”  For a minute or two the little seamstress brooded anxiously; then guided by an infallible instinct, she added decisively:  “It’s been a long time since you’ve seen your ma, and she’s gettin’ right smart along.  Why don’t you run down home for a few days while the flowers are blooming?”

A change passed over Gabriella’s face, and drying her eyes, she looked down on Miss Polly with a lovely enigmatical smile.

“I wonder if I might?” she said doubtfully.

“There ain’t any earthly reason why you shouldn’t.  To-morrow’s Friday, and they can get along without you at Dinard’s perfectly well till the first of the week.”

“Oh, yes, they can get along.  I was only wondering”—­a faint breeze stole in through the window, wafting toward her the scent of wet flowers—­“I was only wondering”—­her eyes grew suddenly radiant, and lifting her arms, she made a gesture as of one escaping from bondage—­“I was only wondering if I might go to-morrow,” she said.

CHAPTER X

THE DREAM AND THE REALITY

At the upper station a little group stood awaiting her, and as the train pulled slowly to the platform, Gabriella distinguished her mother’s pallid face framed in the hanging crape of her veil; Jane, thin, anxious, anæmic, with her look of pinched sweetness; Chancy, florid, portly, and virtuously middle-aged, and their eldest daughter Margaret, a blooming, beautiful girl.  Alighting, Gabriella was embraced by Mrs. Carr, who shed a few gentle tears on her shoulders.

“Gabriella, my child, I thought you would never come back to us,” she lamented; “and now everything is so changed that you will hardly recognize it as home.”

“Well, if she can find a change that isn’t for the better, I hope she’ll point it out and let me make a note of it,” boasted Charley, with hilarity.  “I tell you what, Gabriella, my dear, we’re becoming a number one city.  Everything’s new.  We haven’t left so much as an old brick lying around if we could help it.  If you were to go back there to Hill Street, you’d scarcely know it for the hospitals and schools we’ve got there, and as for this part of the town—­well, I reckon the apartment houses will fairly take your breath away.  Apartment houses!  Well, that’s what I call progress—­apartment houses and skyscrapers, and we’ve got them, too, down on Main Street.  I’ll show them to you to-morrow.  Yes, by George, we’re progressing so fast you can hardly see how we grow.  Why, there wasn’t a skyscraper or an apartment house in the city when you left here, and precious few hospitals.  But now—­well, I’ll show you!  We’re the hospital city of the South, and more than that, we’re becoming a