During the past summer she had been unhappy at her separation from the cares that had engrossed her more and more as their stay in the city drew to an end in the spring, and she had hurried her aunt back to town earlier in the fall than she would have chosen to come.

Margaret had her correspondents among the working-women whom she befriended.

Mrs.Horn was at one time alarmed to find that Margaret was actually promoting a strike of the button-hole workers.

This, of course, had its ludicrous side, in connection with a young lady in good society, and a person of even so little humor as Mrs.Horn could not help seeing it.

At the same time, she could not help foreboding the worst from it; she was afraid that Margaret's health would give way under the strain, and that if she did not go into a sisterhood she would at least go into a decline.