The Passing of Hope Abbott
served as daily reminders. She still made so many inquiries among her friends that "Ruth Herrick's Miss Abbott" was jokingly referred to in newspaper circles as a journalistic "Mrs. Harris." "It is n't mere curiosity that moves me," Miss Herrick explained to the smiling ones; "I'd like to find her, for perhaps I might be able to do something for her. I don't believe she has too much money, not withstanding her reckless way of making gifts."
As the months went on, the whirl of metropolitan news-getting swept into the back ground the memory of her strange caller. It was almost a year after her visit that Miss Herrick, sitting at her desk one stormy winter day, stopped her work long enough to glance at the copy of the evening paper which a boy had just placed at her elbow. Her eye fell on the "scare-head" of a sensational story on the first page. It set forth in heavy type the fact that a woman had just starved to death in a lonely little cottage, in a small town in New Jersey. She had been an educated woman,—a teacher. She had lived alone, and was apparently friendless;
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