the group on the platform, and Sally, Joe, and all the others who had come to say good-bye smiled steadily back. Sometimes they shouted m

from Sunday walks and drives, slipped by. Down near the old Archer ranch, Henry Prout was driving his mother into town. The surrey and the rusty white horse were smothered in sulphurous dust. It seemed odd to Martie that Henn

was at his best; the new hat had its share in the happy recollection. The

jaded, feeling dirty and tumbled, feeling excited and headachy and nervous, Martie saw her neig

themselves together in her tired brain. Walla

reet, one of the biggest cross-streets there is-and over that way is Broadway! We can't take the subway, I wish we could-you wait until you see the expresses! But I'll tell you what we'l

g along; here was a park, with men packed on the benches, and newspapers blowing lazily on the paths. And shops in all the basements-why had no one ever told her that there were shops in all the basemen

t?" Wallace asked

it, swee

at once to Mrs. Curley's big boarding-house in Ea

d believed in nobody; smiling a deep, mysterious smile when her table or her management was praised. She eyed Martie's fresh beauty appraisingly, immediately suspected her condition, was given the young wife's unreserved confidence, and, with a few brief pieces

e! You know you like ou

. Bannister. You can take it o

eighteen was cheap enough, and as she scattered her belongings about, his wi

ll in a whirl of new impressions, unpacked in the big bare bedroom; as pleased as a child to arrange her belongings in the empty bureau or hang them in the shallow closet. She had been looking forward, for five hot d

happens now-I'm

o terrors for Martie as yet, she was all enthusiasm and eagerness. They ate butter cakes and baked apples at Child's, they bought fruit and ice cream bricks and walked along eating them.

its thousand little pleasures for the poor, of its romance and pathos and ugliness and beauty. Even

women who wore masses of marcelled curls and real Irish lace, she watched them all. She drank in the music of t

ake a living here, can't we?" she a

hing in that!"

ut him anxiously at his toilet, his wife had reminded him bravely that if Dawson failed, there wer

contract. He had been less than a week in New York, and look at it! Seve

rehearsals, feeling herself a proud part of the whole enterprise, keenly appreciative of the theatre atmosphere. When he went away with his company in late

observed Mrs. Curley comfortably. "I suffer considerable from the

the gardens are as dry as bones, now, and look at Central Park-as green as ever. And I

go down and open a house in Asbury; she has a little summer place there, with a garage and all. But I tel

oung wife, "because of the uncer

"That is, the nice ones are," she added. "You show me a man who

and his relict were the only women in the big boarding-

rch on a Sunday be the weather what it might, and that strong in his opinions that the boys would ask him this and that like the priest himself! I'm not saying

ily to herself the words "a-little-child

of shops; all small shops, crowded upon each other. Every block had its two or three saloons, its meat market, its delicacy store, its tiny establishments where drygoods and milk and shoes and tobacco and fruit and paints and drugs and candies and hats were sold, and the women who drifted up and down all morning shopping usually pat

r delight in every novel phase of life in the big city fired his own enthusiasm, and i

ed with friends of her own in the kitchen. Mrs. Curley, mighty, deep-voiced, with oily, graying hair and spotted clothes, spent most of the day in a large chair by the open window, and Martie, thinly dressed, wandered about aimlessly. She ne

ilies began to stream by, to the Park; perspiring mothers pushing the baby carriages, small children, already eating, staggering before and behind. By ten the stre

brassy quality, there was no air stirring. The children in the Park would drag home in the hot sunset light, tired, dirty, whining, and a breathless evening follow the burning day. Then Martie and Mrs. C

ard with the same solemn enjoyment. She liked the suddenly darkening sky, the ominous rattle of thunder; "like boxe

nd there a cat slept in the shade, or moved silently from shadow to shadow. From some of the opposite windo

mysteries, and drank in with a genuine dramatic appreciation the vision of a younger, simpler city. No subway, no telephones, no motor cars, no elevated roads-what had New York been like when Mrs. Curley was a bride? Booth and Parepa Rosa and Adelina Patti walked the boards again; the terrible Civil

istory together; there had been plenty of change, prosperity, and excitement in her life. She had had seven children, only three of whom were living: Mary, a prosperous, big matron whose husband, Joe Cunningham, had some exalted position on the Brooklyn polic

y home, full of shouting, dark, untidy-headed children, with an untidy-headed servant, a scatter-brained mother, and an unexacting father in charge. "Curley" usually went to sleep on the sofa after dinner, and Mrs. Curley's sist

ed on us-and then I'd be there sitting up with the medicines, and talking with this one and that. I was never one to run away from sickness, nor death either for that matter. I'm a great hand with death in the house; there's no sole to my foot when I'm needed! I'll neve

nusually interesting experience, she did not then or ever decide. She only knew that she liked to sit playing solitaire in the hot evenings, under a restricted cone of light, with Mrs. Curley sitting in the darkness by t

had been paid for only eight weeks. He idled about with his wife for a few happy weeks, and then got another engagement with a small comic opera troupe, an

ears without a memory of the poignant uneasiness with which she first had walked beneath them, worrying about money, about Wallace's prospects, about herself and her child. Many of her walks

d she knew her wistfulness and gentleness and dependence vaguely irritated. But she could not help it; she w

e, who candidly explained that she had more patients than she could care for without the newcomer. Martie, frightened by the businesslike preparations and the clean, ether-scented rooms, submitted and obeyed with a sick heart. Thro

rating-room; she had only a dazed impression of them all. Life roared and crackled abo

le room was flooded with sunlight, sunlight bright on a snowy world, and the young women who had been so casually indifferent to another woman's agony were

ooked uneasily at Miss Everett, when that nurse bore him away. Did the woman realize what m