‘Oh, what’s up?’

‘I’m gaun into the country to visit a lady,’ said Teen proudly.

’Oh, all right; there’s a hundred waiting on the job, but don’t expect to be taken on the moment you like to show your face.  We can afford to be as independent as you.’

‘I don’t expect to need it,’ said Teen promptly, though in truth her heart sank a little as she heard these words of doom.

If Gladys failed her, she knew of no other place in that great and evil city where she could earn her bread.  She even felt a trifle despondent as she retraced her steps to her garret, but, trying to throw it off, she set herself immediately on entering the house to inspect her wardrobe.  This was a most interesting occupation, and, after much deliberation, she took her best black skirt to pieces, and proceeded to hang it as nearly as possible in the latest fashion.  Then she had her hat to retrim, and a piece of clean lace to sew on her neckband.  At four o’clock her last candle expired in its socket, and she had to go to bed.  At the grey dawn she was astir again, and long before the brougham had left Bellairs Crescent with Gladys, Teen was waiting, tin box in hand, on the platform of St. Enoch’s Station.

Mrs. Fordyce accompanied Gladys to the station, and when Teen saw them she felt a wild desire to run away.  Gladys Graham sitting on a chair in the little attic, talking familiarly of the Hepburns, and Gladys Graham outside, were two very different beings.  Gladys glanced sharply round, and, espying her, smiled reassuringly, and advanced with frank outstretched hand.

’Ah, there you are!  I am glad to see you.  Mrs. Fordyce, this is Teen—­Christina Balfour.  I must begin to call you Christina; I think it is much prettier.  Isn’t this a pleasant day?  The country will be looking lovely.’

Mrs. Fordyce smiled and bowed graciously to the seamstress, but did not offer her hand.  Her manner was kind, but distant; her very smile measured the gulf between them.  Teen felt it just as plainly as if she had spoken it in words, and felt also intuitively that her presence there was not quite approved of by the lawyer’s wife.  That, indeed, was true.  There had been a long and rather warm discussion over the little seamstress that morning in Bellairs Crescent, and Mrs. Fordyce had discovered that, with all her gentleness and simplicity, Gladys was not a person to abandon a project on which she had set her heart.

‘My dear Gladys,’ she took the opportunity of whispering when Teen was out of hearing, ’I am more than ever perplexed.  She is not even interesting—­nothing could be more hopelessly vulgar and commonplace.’

Gladys never spoke.

‘Do tell me what you mean to do with her,’ she pursued, with distinct anxiety in her manner.

‘Don’t let us speak about it, Mrs. Fordyce,’ said Gladys rather coldly.  ’It is impossible you can understand.  I have been like her; I know what her life is.  You must let me alone.’