“Yes, ma’am, I’ll promise, of course I will,” said Druse hastily, her thin little bosom swelling with compassion.  “I won’t never let ’em know I know you, if you say so.  No, ma’am, it’s awful cruel to blame you for your brother’s drinkin’.  I’ve got some pieces about it at home, about folkses’ families a-sufferin’ for their drinkin’.  I’d like to come again if you want me.  I’m afraid I ain’t much company, but I could stroke your head every time you have a headache.  It’s awful nice to know somebody that’s lived in the country and understands just how it is when you first—­”

Druse looked down.  The doctor’s remedy was apparently successful this time, for with crimson cheeks and parted lips, Miss Blanche De Courcy had forgotten her headache in a very profound slumber.  Druse gazed at her with mingled admiration and pity.  No wonder the room seemed a little untidy.  She would have liked to put it to rights, but fearing she might waken her new friend, who was now breathing very heavily, she only pulled the shade down, and with a last compassionate glance at the victim of a brother’s intemperance, she picked up her crocheting and tip-toed lightly from the room.

After that life in the Vere De Vere was not so dreary.  Druse was not secretive, but she had the accomplishment of silence, and she kept her promise to the letter.  Druse could not feel that she could be much consolation to so elegant a being.  Miss De Courcy was often distraite when she brought her crocheting in of an afternoon, or else she was extremely, not to say boisterously gay, and talked or laughed incessantly, or sang at the upright piano that looked too large for the little parlor.  The songs were apt to be compositions with such titles as, “Pretty Maggie Kelly,” and “Don’t Kick him when He’s Down,” but Druse never heard anything more reprehensible, and she thought them beautiful.

Sometimes, quite often indeed, her hostess had the headaches that forced her to resort to the doctor’s disagreeable remedy from the black bottle, or was sleeping off a headache on the sofa.  Miss De Courcy did not seem to have many women friends.  Once, it is true, two ladies with brilliant golden hair, and cheeks flushed perhaps by the toilsome ascent to the fourth floor, rustled loudly into the parlor.  They were very gay, and so finely dressed, one in a bright green plush coat, and the other in a combination of reds, that Druse made a frightened plunge for the door and escaped, but not before one of the ladies had inquired, with a peal of laughter, “Who’s the kid?” Druse had flushed resentfully, but she did not care when her friend told her afterward, with a toss of the head, “They’re nothing.  They just come here to see how I was fixed.”

After a little Druse offered timidly to clean up the room for her, and quite regularly then, would appear on each Wednesday with her broom and duster, happy to be allowed to bring order out of chaos.