“I now understand how truly you lost a friend and companion in your piano,” said Miss Wetheridge, “and I want you to come over here and play whenever you feel like it, whether I am at home or not.”

Mildred smiled, but made no reply.  She could accept kindness and help from one who gave them as did Miss Wetheridge, but she was too proud and sensitive to enter upon an intimacy that must of necessity be so one-sided in its favors and advantages, and she instinctively felt that such wide differences in condition would lead to mutual embarrassments that her enthusiastic friend could not foresee.  It was becoming her fixed resolve to accept her lot, with all that it involved, and no amount of encouragement could induce her to renew associations that could be enjoyed now only through a certain phase of charity, however the fact might be disguised.  But she would rather reveal her purpose by the retiring and even tenor of her way than by any explanations of her feelings.  Thus it came about in the future that Miss Wetheridge made three calls, at least, to one that she received, and that in spite of all she could do Mildred shrank from often meeting other members of her family.  But this sturdy self-respect on the part of the young girl—­this resolute purpose not to enter a social circle where she would at least fear patronage and surprise at her presence—­increased her friend’s respect in the secrecy of her heart.

Mildred at once became a member of the Young Women’s Association, and its library and reading-room promised to become a continued means of pleasure and help.  From among the several phases of skilled labor taught under the auspices of the Association, she decided to choose the highest—­that of stenography—­if her father thought he could support the family without much help for a few months.  She was already very rapid and correct in her penmanship, and if she could become expert in taking shorthand notes she was assured that she could find abundant and highly remunerative scope for her skill, and under circumstances, too, that would not involve unpleasant publicity.  She thought very favorably, also, of the suggestion that she should join the bookkeeping class.  With her fine mental capacity and previous education Miss Wetheridge believed that Mildred could so far master these two arts as to be sure of an independence, and her kind friend proposed to use no little influence in finding opportunities for their exercise.

Mildred, naturally, lost no time in explaining her projects to her father, and it so happened that she spoke at a moment of peculiar exhilaration on his part.  “If it would give you pleasure,” he said, “to learn these two accomplishments, you may do so, of course, but I foresee no probability of your ever putting them to use.  I now have prospects,” etc., etc.  Soon after, he was in a deep sleep.  She looked at him with troubled eyes, and promptly entered on her studies the following day, working with the assiduity of one who feels that the knowledge may be needed before it can be acquired.