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IT was the autumn after I had the typhoid. I'd been three months in / hospital, and when I came out I looked so weak and tottery that the two / or three ladies I applied to were afraid to engage me. Most of my money / was gone, and after I'd boarded for two months, hanging about the / employment-agencies, and answering any advertisement that looked any / way respectable, I pretty nearly lost heart, for fretting hadn't made / me fatter, and I didn't see why my luck should ever turn. It did / though -- or I thought so at the time. A Mrs. Railton, a friend of the / lady that first brought me out to the States, met me one day and / stopped to speak to me: she was one that had always a friendly way with / her. She asked me what ailed me to look so white, and when I told her, / "Why, Hartley," says she, "I believe I've got the very place for you. / Come in to-morrow and we'll talk about it."
The next day, when I called, she told me the lady she'd in mind was a / niece of hers, a Mrs. Brympton, a youngish lady, but something of an / invalid, who lived all the year round at her country-place on the / Hudson, owing to not being able to stand the fatigue of town life.