"Well now, my dear," said Miss Berry in parting advice, "don't you wander through the woods too long and take up with a crooked stick at last; but, whatever you do, marry a man o' your own color, who wears a hat and coat instead of a turban and a bath wrapper. Remember that."
"I don't know," responded Mildred, with a teasing smile. "The Pink Turban says he has a pair of very handsome diamond earrings. Perhaps, if I should have my ears pierced, he would let me wear them a part of the time."
"Go 'way!" exclaimed Miss Berry, with a repudiatory gesture.
The old Scotch housekeeper soon returned, joyful to be back again, and felicitating herself that the Fair was safely over; and life might have been supposed to move on as before, but it did not.
Clover had come into a new state of existence, the deep, constant joy of which she never expressed in words. Except for the framed photograph on her dressing-table, Mildred might have believed her equable sister to be unchanged in thought as well as habit; but Mildred's own mode of life was noticeably changed this season. The winter was a hard one. Cold weather set in in November, and the reaction from the great business activity of the year before caused a depression cruelly felt among the poor. Charitable work was the order of the day, and Mildred entered into it heart and soul.
"Slumming was never so fashionable," she said; and thus lightly accounting for the new direction of her energy, she learned novel views of life, which would modify her character in all time to come. Clover was her efficient aid, and her friend Helen Eames sometimes went on these expeditions too, under the shadow of her wing.
It was rather a grievance with Helen that Mildred never of her own accord referred to Jack, and if questioned, made brief replies. Mr. Van Tassel was a Chicago man and belonged here. He was, in Helen's own phraseology, "perfectly fascinating," and not to be lightly dropped. She intended to keep herself posted as to the probabilities of his return; but Mildred early nipped her plans in the bud.
"We can't reckon on Mr. Van Tassel as a Chicagoan any more," she said. "He is reading law very earnestly now in Boston, and he has lived there so many years, it is home to him. Besides that, he is devoted to Clover, and when she is married to his cousin, that will be another tie to keep him at the East."
Upon which Miss Eames grew thoughtful, and fortune shortly after throwing in her way an invitation to visit a friend in Boston, she incontinently dropped her pilgrimages amid Chicago's back streets, and departed on the most limited train available.
Soon afterward, Mildred received a gay letter from her. Mr. Van Tassel had called, and had been one of the theatre party her hostess had given the night before. She was having a charming time, and hoped dear Mildred would not take something in those dreadful basements before she could return to help her again.