Win had often tried to check her tendency to over-optimism by telling herself that neither Mr. Burritt nor Mr. Noble might have work to give.  But Miss Ellis (now comfortably married in London) had said they were kind men.  If they had nothing to offer, they would certainly introduce Miss Child to some one who had.  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.  A little more latitude—­a raising of the eyebrows instead of a frown—­was granted if you were fortunate enough to be of the opposite sex.  Miss Hampshire’s sad smile seemed to concede that men had temptations.

There were bank clerks and schoolteachers and translators though no more poetesses; and everybody was kind to the new boarder, the Englishwoman, especially in telling her all about New York.

“What do you think of Broadway?” asked her neighbour a handsome young German Jew, who was more insistently American than any of those native born.

Win was shamefacedly not sure whether she had seen it.

“Not sure whether you have seen Broadway!” exclaimed Mr. Loewenfeld.  “Wait till you’ve been on the Great White Way after dark. Then I guess you won’t make any mistake.”

“Is it so wonderful?” she asked.

“I should smile!  There’s nothing like it on earth.  Would you like to walk out and see it to-night?  Miss Secker and I’ll take you, if you would, won’t we, Miss Secker?”

“Only too pleased,” rather shrilly replied a fair-haired girl on his other side—­a pretty girl in eyeglasses who, Miss Hampshire had announced, was “translating secretary” for a firm of toy importers.  Somehow the tone suggested to Win an incipient engagement of marriage and jealousy of new importations.