"Say, Birdie!" She impulsively interrupted her own confused reflections. "Do you think they liked me—honest?"

"Who?" said Birdie, drowsily, "the audience?"

"No. Those fellows last night. I haven't got any looks to brag on, and I'm as green as a string-bean!"

"That's what tickles 'em," said Birdie. "Besides, you can't ever tell what makes a girl take. You got a independent way of walking and talking, and Monte's crazy 'bout your laugh. But you're a funny kid; you beckon a feller with one hand and slap his face with the other."

"Not unless he gets nervy!" said Nance.

After what euphemistically might be termed a buffet breakfast, prepared over the gas and served on the trunk, Nance departed for Calvary Alley, to proclaim to the family her declaration of independence. She was prepared for a battle royal with all whom it might concern, and was therefore greatly relieved to find only her stepmother at home. That worthy lady surrendered before a gun was fired.

"Ain't that Irish luck fer you?" she exclaimed, almost enviously. "Imagine one of Yager's and Snawdor's childern gittin' on the stage! If Bud Molloy hadn't taken to railroading he could 'a' been a end man in a minstrel show! You got a lot of his takin' ways, Nance. It's a Lord's pity you ain't got his looks!"

"Oh, give me time!" said Nance, whose spirits were soaring.

"I sort 'er thought of joining the ballet onct myself," said Mrs. Snawdor, with a conscious smile. "It was on account of a scene-shifter I was runnin' with along about the time I met your pa."

"You!" exclaimed Nance. "Oh! haven't I got a picture of you dancing. Wait 'til I show you!" And ably assisted by the bolster and the bedspread, she gave a masterly imitation of her stout stepmother that made the original limp with laughter. Then quite as suddenly, Nance collapsed into a chair and grew very serious.

"Say!" she demanded earnestly, "honest to goodness now! Do you think there's any sin in me going on the stage?"

"Sin!" repeated Mrs. Snawdor. "Why, I think it's elegant. I was sayin' so to Mrs. Smelts only yesterday when she was takin' on about Birdie's treatin' her so mean an' never comin' to see her or writin' to her. 'Don't lay it on the stage,' I says to her. 'Lay it on Birdie; she always was a stuck-up piece.'"

Nance pondered the matter, her chin on her palm. Considering the chronic fallibility of Mrs. Snawdor's judgment, she would have been more comfortable if she had met with some opposition.

"Mr. Demry thinks it's wrong," said Nance, taking upon herself the role of counsel for the prosecution. "He took on something fierce when he saw me last night."

"He never knowed what he was doin'," Mrs. Snawdor said. "They tell me he can play in the orchestry, when he's full as a nut."

"And there's Uncle Jed," continued Nance uneasily. "What you reckon he's going to say?"

"You leave that to me," said Mrs. Snawdor, darkly. "Mr. Burks ain't goin' to git a inklin' 'til you've went. There ain't nobody I respect more on the face of the world than I do Jed Burks, but some people is so all-fired good that livin' with 'em is like wearin' new shoes the year round."

"'T ain't as if I was doing anything wicked," said Nance, this time counsel for the defense.

"Course not," agreed Mrs. Snawdor. "How much they goin' to pay you?"

The incredible sum was mentioned, and Mrs. Snawdor's imagination took instant flight.

"You'll be gittin' a autymobile at that rate. Say, if I send Lobelia round to Cemetery Street and git yer last week's pay, can I have it?"

Nance was counting on that small sum to finish payment on her spring suit, but in the face of imminent affluence she could ill afford to be niggardly.

"I'll buy Rosy V. some shoes, an' pay somethin' on the cuckoo clock," planned Mrs. Snawdor, "an' I've half a mind to take another policy on William J. That boy's that venturesome it wouldn't surprise me none to see him git kilt any old time!"

Nance, who had failed to convince herself, either as counsel for the defense or counsel for the prosecution, assumed the prerogative of judge and dismissed the case. If older people had such different opinions about right and wrong, what was the use in her bothering about it? With a shrug of her shoulders she set to work sorting her clothes and packing the ones she needed in a box.

"The gingham dresses go to Fidy," she said with reckless generosity, "the blue skirt to Lobelia, and my Madonna—" Her eyes rested wistfully on her most cherished possession. "I think I'd like Rosy to have that when she grows up."

"All right," agreed Mrs. Snawdor. "There ain't no danger of anybody takin' it away from her."

Nance was kneeling on the floor, tying a cord about her box when she heard steps on the stairs.

"Uncle Jed?" she asked in alarm.

"No. Just Snawdor. He won't ast no questions. He ain't got gumption enough to be curious."

"I hate to go sneaking off like this without telling everybody good-by," said Nance petulantly, "Uncle Jed, and the children, and the Levinskis, and Mr. Demry, and—and—Dan."

"You don't want to take no risks," said Mrs. Snawdor, importantly. "There's a fool society for everything under the sun, an' somebody'll be tryin' to git out a injunction. I don't mind swearin' to whatever age you got to be, but Mr. Burks is so sensitive about them things."

"All right," said Nance, flinging on her hat and coat, "tell 'em how it was when I'm gone. I'll be sending you money before long."

"That's right," whispered Mrs. Snawdor, hanging over the banister as Nance felt her way down the stairs. "You be good to yerself an' see if you can't git me a theayter ticket for to-morrow night. Git two, an' I'll take Mis' Gorman."

Never had Nance tripped so lightly down those dark, narrow stairs—the stairs her feet had helped to wear away in her endless pilgrimages with buckets of coal and water and beer, with finished and unfinished garments, and omnipresent Snawdor babies. She was leaving it all forever, along with the smell of pickled herrings and cabbage and soapsuds. But she was not going to forget the family! Already she was planning munificent gifts from that fabulous sum that was henceforth to be her weekly portion.

At Mr. Demry's closed door she paused; then hastily retracing her steps, she slipped back to her own room and got a potted geranium, bearing one dirty-faced blossom. This she placed on the floor outside his door and then, picking up her big box, she slipped quickly out of the house, through the alley and into the street.

It was late when she got back to Birdie's room, and as she entered, she was startled by the sound of smothered sobbing.

"Birdie!" she cried in sudden alarm, peering into the semi-darkness, "what's the matter? Are you fired?"

Birdie started up hastily from the bed where she had been lying face downward, and dried her eyes.

"No," she said crossly. "Nothing's the matter, only I got the blues."

"The blues!" repeated Nance, incredulously. "What for?"

"Oh, everything. I wish I was dead."

"Birdie Smelts, what's happened to you?" demanded Nance in alarm, sitting by her on the bed and trying to put her arm around her.

"Whoever said anything had happened?" asked the older girl, pushing her away. "Stop asking fool questions and get dressed. We'll be late as it is."

For some time they went about their preparations in silence; then Nance, partly to relieve the tension, and partly because the matter was of vital interest, asked:

"Do you reckon Mr. Mac and Mr. Monte will come again to-night?"

"You can't tell," said Birdie. "What do they care about engagements? We are nothing but dirt to them—just dirt under their old patent-leather pumps!"

This bitterness on Birdie's part was so different from her customary superiority where men were concerned, that Nance gasped.

"If they do come," continued Birdie vindictively, "you just watch me teach Mac Clarke a thing or two. He needn't think because his folks happen to be swells, he can treat me any old way. I'll make it hot for him if he don't look out, you see if I don't."

Once back at the Gaiety, Nance forgot all about Birdie and her love affairs. Her own small triumph completely engrossed her. A morning paper had mentioned the fantastic dance of the little bear, and had given her three lines all to herself. Reeser was jubilant, the director was mollified, and even the big comedian whose name blazed in letters of fire outside, actually stopped her in the wings to congratulate her.

"Look here, young person," he said, lifting a warning finger, "you want to be careful how you steal my thunder. You'll be taking my job next!"

Whereupon Nance had the audacity to cross her eyes and strike his most famous pose before she dodged under his arm and scampered down the stairs.

It seemed incredible that the marvelous events of the night before could happen all over again; but they did. She had only to imitate her own performance to send the audience into peals of laughter. It would have been more fun to try new tricks, but on this point Pulatki was adamant.

"I vant zat you do ze same act, no more, no less, see?" he demanded of her, fiercely.

When the encore came, and at Reeser's command she snatched off her bear's head and made her funny, awkward, little bow, she involuntarily glanced down at the orchestra. Mr. Demry was not there, but in the parquet she encountered a pair of importunate eyes that set her pulses bounding. They sought her out in the subsequent chorus and followed her every movement in the grand march that followed.

"Mr. Mac's down there," she whispered excitedly to Birdie as they passed in the first figure, but Birdie tossed her head and flirted persistently with the gallery which was quite unused to such marked attention from the principal show girl.

There was no supper after the play that night, and it was only after much persuasion on Mac's part, reinforced by the belated Monte, that Birdie was induced to come out of her sulks and go for a drive around the park.

"Me for the front seat!" cried Nance hoydenishly, and then, as Mac jumped in beside her and took the wheel, she saw her mistake.

"Oh! I didn't know—" she began, but Mac caught her hand and gave it a grateful squeeze.

"Confess you wanted to sit by me!" he whispered.

"But I didn't!" she protested hotly. "I never was in a automobile before and I just wanted to see how it worked!"

She almost persuaded herself that this was true when they reached the long stretch of parkway, and Mac let her take the wheel. It was only when in the course of instruction Mac's hand lingered too long on hers, or his gay, careless face leaned too close, that she had her misgivings.

"Say! this is great!" she cried rapturously, with her feet braced and her eyes on the long road ahead. "When it don't get the hic-cups, it beats a horse all hollow!"

"What do you know about horses?" teased Mac, giving unnecessary assistance with the wheel.

"Enough to keep my hands off the reins when another fellow's driving!" she said coolly—a remark that moved Mac to boisterous laughter.

When they were on the homeward way and Mac had taken the wheel again, they found little to say to each other. Once he got her to light a cigarette for him, and once or twice she asked a question about the engine. In Calvary Alley one talked or one didn't as the mood suggested, and Nance was unversed in the fine art of making conversation. It disturbed her not a whit that she and the handsome youth beside her had no common topic of interest. It was quite enough for her to sit there beside him, keenly aware that his arm was pressing hers and that every time she glanced up she found him glancing down.

It was a night of snow and moonshine, one of those transitorial nights when winter is going and spring is coming. Nance held her breath as the car plunged headlong into one mass of black shadows after another only to emerge triumphant into the white moonlight. She loved the unexpected revelations of the headlights, which turned the dim road to silver and lit up the dark turf at the wayside. She loved the crystal-clear moon that was sailing off and away across those dim fields of virgin snow. And then she was not thinking any longer, but feeling—feeling beauty and wonder and happiness and always the blissful thrill of that arm pressed against her own.

Not until they were nearing the city did she remember the couple on the back seat.

"Wake up there!" shouted Mac, tossing his cap over his shoulder. "Gone to sleep?"

"I am trying to induce Miss Birdie to go to the carnival ball with me to-morrow night," said Monte. "It's going to be no end of a lark."

"Take me, too, Birdie, please!" burst out Nance with such childish vehemence that they all laughed.

"What's the matter with us all going?" cried Mac, instantly on fire at the suggestion. "Mother's having a dinner to-morrow night, but I can join you after the show. What do you say, Bird?"

But Birdie was still in the sulks, and it was not until Mac had changed places with Monte and brought the full battery of his persuasions to bear upon her that she agreed to the plan.

That night when the girls were tucked comfortably in bed and the lights were out, they discussed ways and means.

"I'm going to see if I can't borrow a couple of red-bird costumes off Mrs. Ryan," said Birdie, whose good humor seemed completely restored. "We'll buy a couple of masks. I don't know what Monte's letting us in for, but I'll try anything once."

"Will there be dancing, Birdie?" asked Nance, her eyes shining in the dark.

"Of course, Silly! Nothing but. Say, what was the matter with you and Mac to-night? You didn't seem to hit it off."

"Oh! we got along pretty good."

"I never heard you talking much. By the way, he's going to take me to-morrow night, and you are going with Monte."

"Any old way suits me!" said Nance, "just so I get there." But she lay awake for a time staring into the dark, thinking things over.

"Does he always call you 'Bird'?" she asked after a long silence.

"Who, Mac? Yes. Why?"

"Oh! Nothing," said Nance.

The next day being Saturday, there were two performances, beside the packing necessary for an early departure on the morrow. But notwithstanding the full day ahead of her, Birdie spent the morning in bed, languidly directing Nance, who emptied the wardrobe and bureau drawers and sorted and folded the soiled finery. Toward noon she got up and, petulantly declaring that the room was suffocating, announced that she was going out to do some shopping.

"I'll come, too," said Nance, to whom the purchasing of wearing apparel was a new and exciting experience.

"No; you finish up here," said Birdie. "I'll be back soon."

Nance went to the window and watched for her to come out in the street below. She was beginning to be worried about Birdie. What made her so restless and discontented? Why wouldn't she go to see her mother? Why was she so cross with Mac Clarke when he was with her and so miserable when he was away? While she pondered it over, she saw Birdie cross the street and stand irresolute for a moment, before she turned her back on the shopping district and hastened off to the east where the tall pipes of the factories stood like exclamation points along the sky-line.

Already the noon whistles were blowing, and she recognized, above the rest, the shrill voice of Clarke's Bottle Factory. How she used to listen for that whistle, especially on Saturdays. Why, this was Saturday! In the exciting rush of events she had forgotten completely that Dan would be waiting for her at five o'clock at the foot of Cemetery Street. Never once in the months she had been at Miss Bobinet's had he failed to be there on Saturday afternoon. If only she could send him some word, make some excuse! But it was not easy to deceive Dan, and she knew he would never rest until he got at the truth of the matter. No; she had better take Mrs. Snawdor's advice and run no risks. And yet that thought of Dan waiting patiently at the corner tormented her as she finished the packing.

When the time arrived to report at the theater, Birdie had not returned, so Nance rushed off alone at the last minute. It was not until the first chorus was about to be called that the principal show girl, flushed and tired, flung herself into the dressing-room and made a lightning change in time to take her place at the head of the line.

There was a rehearsal between the afternoon and evening performances, and the girls had little time for confidences.

"Don't ask me any questions!" said Birdie crossly, as she sat before her dressing-table, wearily washing off the make-up of the afternoon in order to put on the make-up of the evening. "I'm so dog tired I'd lots rather be going to bed than to that carnival thing!"

"Don't you back out!" warned Nance, to whom it was ridiculous that any one should be tired under such exhilarating circumstances.

"Oh, I'll go," said Birdie, "if it's just for the sake of getting something decent to eat. I'm sick of dancing on crackers and ice-water."

That night Nance, for the first time, was reconciled to the final curtain. The weather was threatening and the audience was small, but that was not what took the keen edge off the performance. It was the absence in the parquet of a certain pair of pursuing eyes that made all the difference. Moreover, the prospect of the carnival ball made even the footlights pale by comparison.

The wardrobe woman, after much coaxing and bribing, had been induced to lend the girls two of the property costumes, and Nance, with the help of several giggling assistants, was being initiated into the mysteries of the red-bird costume. When she had donned the crimson tights, and high-heeled crimson boots, and the short-spangled slip with its black gauze wings, she gave a half-abashed glance at herself in the long mirror.

"I can't do it, Birdie!" she cried, "I feel like a fool. You be a red bird, and let me be a bear!"

"Don't we all do it every night?" asked Birdie. "When we've got on our masks, nobody 'll know us. We'll just be a couple of 'Rag-Time Follies' taking a night off."

"Don't she look cute with her cap on?" cried one of the girls. "I'd give my head to be going!"

Nance put on a borrowed rain-coat which was to serve as evening wrap as well and, with a kiss all around and many parting gibes, ran up the steps in Birdie's wake.

The court outside the stage entrance was a bobbing mass of umbrellas. Groups of girls, pulling their wraps on as they came, tripped noisily down the steps, greeting waiting cavaliers, or hurrying off alone in various directions.

"That's Mac's horn," said Birdie, "a long toot and two short ones. I'd know it in Halifax!"

At the curbing the usual altercation arose between Mac and Birdie as to how they should sit. The latter refused to sit on the front seat for fear of getting wet, and Mac refused to let Monte drive.

"Oh, I don't mind getting wet!" cried Nance with a fine show of indifference. "That's what a rain-coat's for."

When Mac had dexterously backed his machine out of its close quarters, and was threading his way with reckless skill through the crowded streets, he said softly, without turning his head:

"I think I rather like you, Nance Molloy!"



CHAPTER XX

WILD OATS

The tenth annual carnival ball, under the auspices of a too-well-known political organization, was at its midnight worst. It was one of those conglomerate gatherings, made up of the loose ends of the city—ward politicians, girls from the department stores, Bohemians with an unsated thirst for diversion, reporters, ostensibly looking for copy, women just over the line of respectability, sometimes on one side, sometimes on the other, and the inevitable sprinkling of well-born youths who regard such occasions as golden opportunities for seeing that mysterious phantom termed "life."

It was all cheap and incredibly tawdry, from the festoons of paper roses on the walls to the flash of paste jewels in make-believe crowns. The big hall, with its stage flanked by gilded boxes, was crowded with a shifting throng of maskers in costumes of flaunting discord. Above the noisy laughter and popping of corks, rose the blaring strains of a brass band. Through the odor of flowers came the strong scent of musk, which, in turn, was routed by the fumes of beer and tobacco which were already making the air heavy.

On the edge of all this stood Nance Molloy, in that magic hour of her girlhood when the bud was ready to burst into the full-blown blossom. Her slender figure on tiptoe with excitement, her eyes star-like behind her mask, she stood poised, waiting with all her unslaked thirst for pleasure, to make her plunge into the gay, dancing throng. She no longer cared if her skirts were short, and her arms and neck were bare. She no longer thought of how she looked or how she acted. There was no Pulatki in the wings to call her down for extra flourishes; there was no old white face in the orchestra to disturb her conscience. Her chance for a good time had come at last, and she was rushing to meet it with arms outstretched.

"They are getting ready for the grand march!" cried Monte, who, with Mac, represented the "two Dromios." "We separate at the end of the hall, and when the columns line up again, you dance with your vis-a-vis."

"My who-tee-who?" asked Nance.

"Vis-a-vis—fellow opposite. Come ahead!"

Down the long hall swung the gay procession, while the floor vibrated to the rhythm of the prancing feet. The columns marched and countermarched and fell into two long lines facing each other. The leader of the orchestra blew a shrill whistle, and Nance, marking time expectantly, saw one of the Dromios slip out of his place and into the one facing her. The next moment the columns flowed together, and she found herself in his arms, swinging in and out of the gay whirling throng with every nerve tingling response to the summoning music.

Suddenly a tender pressure made her glance up sharply at the white mask of her companion.

"Why—why, I thought it was Mr. Monte," she laughed.

"Disappointed?" asked Mac.

"N-no."

"Then why are you stopping?"

Nance could not tell him that in her world a "High Particular" was not to be trifled with. In her vigil of the night before she had made firm resolve to do the square thing by Birdie Smelts.

"Where are the others?" she asked in sudden confusion.

"In the supper room probably. Aren't you going to finish this with me?"

"Not me. I'm going to dance with Mr. Monte."

"Has he asked you?"

"No; I'm going to ask him." And she darted away, leaving Mac to follow at his leisure.

After supper propriety, which up to now had held slack rein on the carnival spirit, turned her loose. Masks were flung aside, hundreds of toy balloons were set afloat and tossed from hand to hand, confetti was showered from the balcony, boisterous song and laughter mingled with the music. The floor resembled some gigantic kaleidoscope, one gay pattern following another in rapid succession. And in every group the most vivid note was struck by a flashing red bird. Even had word not gone abroad that the girls in crimson and black were from the "Rag Time Follies", Birdie's conspicuous charms would have created instant comment and a host of admirers.

Nance, with characteristic independence, soon swung out of Birdie's orbit and made friends for herself. For her it was a night of delirium, and her pulses hammered in rhythm to the throbbing music. In one day life had caught her up out of an abyss of gloom and swung her to a dizzy pinnacle of delight, where she poised in exquisite ecstasy, fearing that the next turn of the wheel might carry her down again. Laughter had softened her lips and hung mischievous lights in her eyes; happiness had set her nerves tingling and set roses blooming in cheeks and lips. The smoldering fires of self-expression, smothered so long, burst into riotous flame. With utter abandonment she flung herself into the merriment of the moment, romping through the dances with any one who asked her, slapping the face of an elderly knight who went too far in his gallantries, dancing a hornpipe with a fat clown to the accompaniment of a hundred clapping hands. Up and down the crowded hall she raced, a hoydenish little tom-boy, drunk with youth, with freedom, and with the pent-up vitality of years.

Close after her, snatching her away from the other dancers only to have her snatched away from him in turn, was Mac Clarke, equally flushed and excited, refusing to listen to Monte's insistent reminder that a storm was brewing and they ought to go home.

"Hang the storm!" cried Mac gaily. "I'm in for it with the governor, anyhow. Let's make a night of it!"

At the end of a dance even wilder than the rest, Nance found herself with Mac at the entrance to one of the boxes that flanked the stage.

"I've got you now!" he panted, catching her wrists and pulling her within the curtained recess. "You've got to tell me why you've been running away from me all evening."

"I haven't," said Nance, laughing and struggling to free her hands.

"You have, too! You've given me the slip a dozen times. Don't you know I'm crazy about you?"

"Much you are!" scoffed Nance. "Go tell that to Birdie."

"I'll tell it to Birdie and every one else if you like," Mac cried. "It was all up with me the first time I saw you."

With his handsome, boyish face and his frilled shirt, he looked so absurdly like the choir boy, who had once sat on the fence flinging rocks at her, that she threw back her head and laughed.

"You don't even know the first time you saw me," she challenged him.

"Well, I know I've seen you somewhere before. Tell me where?"

"Guess!" said Nance, with dancing eyes.

"Wait! I know! It was on the street one night. You were standing in a drug store. A red light was shining on you, and you smiled at me."

"I smiled at you because I knew you. I'd seen you before that. Once when you didn't want me to. In the factory yard—behind the gas-pipe—"

"Were you the little girl that caught me kissing Bird that day?"

"Yes! But there was another time even before that."

He searched her face quizzically, still holding her wrists.

Nance, no longer trying to free her hands, hummed teasingly, half under her breath:

"Do ye think the likes of ye Could learn to like the likes o' me? Arrah, come in, Barney McKane, out of the rain!"

A puzzled look swept his face; then he cried exultantly:

"I've got it. It was you who let my pigeons go! You little devil! I'm going to pay you back for that!" and before she knew it, he had got both of her hands into one of his and had caught her to him, and was kissing her there in the shadow of the curtain, kissing her gay, defiant eyes and her half-childish lips.

And Nance, the independent, scoffing, high-headed Nance, who up to this time had waged successful warfare, offensive as well as defensive, against the invading masculine, forgot for one transcendent second everything in the world except the touch of those ardent lips on hers and the warm clasp of the arm about her yielding shoulders.

In the next instant she sprang away from him, and in dire confusion fled out of the box and down the corridor.

At the door leading back into the ball-room a group of dancers had gathered and were exchanging humorous remarks about a woman who was being borne, feet foremost, into the corridor by two men in costume.

Nance, craning her neck to see, caught a glimpse of a white face with a sagging mouth, and staring eyes under a profusion of tumbled red hair. With a gasp of recognition she pushed forward and impulsively seized one of the woman's limp hands.

"Gert!" she cried, "what's the matter? Are you hurt?"

The monk gave a significant wink at Mac, who had joined them, and the by-standers laughed.

"She's drunk!" said Mac, abruptly, pulling Nance away. "Where did you ever know that woman?"

"Why, it's Gert, you know, at the factory! She worked at the bench next to mine!"

Her eyes followed the departing group somberly, and she lingered despite Mac's persuasion.

Poor Gert! Was this what she meant by a good time? To be limp and silly like that, with her dress slipping off her shoulder and people staring at her and laughing at her?

"I don't want to dance!" she said impatiently, shaking off Mac's hand.

The steaming hall, reeking with tobacco smoke and stale beer, the men and women with painted faces and blackened eyes leering and languishing at each other, the snatches of suggestive song and jest, filled her with sudden disgust.

"I'm going home," she announced with determination.

"But, Nance!" pleaded Mac, "you can't go until we've had our dance."

But for Nance the spell was broken, and her one idea was to get away. When she found Birdie she became more insistent than ever.

"Why not see it out?" urged Mac. "I don't want to go home."

"You are as hoarse as a frog now," said Monte.

"Glad of it! Let's me out of singing in the choir to-morrow—I mean to-day! Who wants another drink?"

Birdie did, and another ten minutes was lost while they went around to the refreshment room.

The storm was at its height when at four o'clock they started on that mad drive home. The shrieking wind, the wet, slippery streets, the lightning flashing against the blurred wind-shield, the crashes of thunder that drowned all other sounds, were sufficient to try the nerves of the steadiest driver. But Mac sped his car through it with reckless disregard, singing, despite his hoarseness, with Birdie and Monte, and shouting laughing defiance as the lightning played.

Nance sat very straight beside him with her eyes on the road ahead. She hated Birdie for having taken enough wine to make her silly like that; she hated the boys for laughing at her. She saw nothing funny in the fact that somebody had lost the latch-key and that they could only get in by raising the landlady, who was sharp of tongue and free with her comments.

"You girls better come on over to my rooms," urged Monte. "We'll cook your breakfast on the chafing-dish, won't we, Mac?"

"Me for the couch!" said Birdie. "I'm cross-eyed, I'm so sleepy."

"I'm not going," said Nance, shortly.

"Don't be a short-sport, Nance," urged Birdie, peevishly. "It's as good as morning now. We can loaf around Monte's for a couple of hours and then go over to my room and change our clothes in time to get to the station by seven. Less time we have to answer questions, better it'll be for us."

"I tell you I ain't going!" protested Nance, hotly.

"Yes, you are!" whispered Mac softly. "You are going to be a good little girl and do whatever I want you to."

Nance grew strangely silent under his compelling look, and under the touch of his hand as it sought hers in the darkness. Why wasn't she angry with Mr. Mac as she was with the others? Why did she want so much to do whatever he asked her to? After all perhaps there was no harm in going to Mr. Monte's for a little while, perhaps—

She drew in her breath suddenly and shivered. For the first time in her life she was afraid, not of the storm, or the consequences of her escapade, but of herself. She was afraid of the quick, sweet shiver that ran over her whenever Mac touched her, of the strange weakness that came over her even now, as his hands claimed hers.

"Say, I'm going to get out," she said suddenly.

"Stop the car! Don't you hear me? I want to get out!"

"Nonsense!" said Mac, "you don't even know where you are! You are coming with us to Monte's; that's what you are going to do."

But Nance knew more than he thought. In the last flash of lightning she had seen, back of them on the left, startlingly white for the second against the blackness, the spire of Calvary Cathedral. She knew that they were rapidly approaching the railroad crossing where Uncle Jed's signal tower stood, beyond which lay a region totally unfamiliar to her.

She waited tensely until Mac had sped the car across the gleaming tracks, just escaping the descending gates. Then she bent forward and seized the emergency brake. The car came to a halt with a terrific jerk, plunging them all forward, and under cover of the confusion Nance leapt out and, darting under the lowered gate, dashed across the tracks. The next moment a long freight train passed between her and the automobile, and when it was done with its noisy shunting backward and forward, and had gone ahead, the street was empty.

Watching her chance between the lightning flashes, she darted from cover to cover. Once beyond the signal tower she would be safe from Uncle Jed's righteous eye, and able to dash down a short cut she knew that led into the street back of the warehouse and thence into Calvary Alley. If she could get to her old room for the next two hours, she could change her clothes and be off again before any one knew of her night's adventure.

Just as she reached the corner, a flash more blinding than the rest ripped the heavens. A line of fire raced toward her along the steel rails, then leapt in a ball to the big bell at the top of the signal tower. There was a deafening crash; all the electric lights went out, and Nance found herself cowering against the fence, apparently the one living object in that wild, wet, storm-racked night.

The only lights to be seen were the small red lamps suspended on the slanting gates. Nance waited for them to lower when the freight train that had backed into the yards five minutes before, rushed out again. But the lamps did not move.

She crept back across the tracks, watching with fascinated horror the dark windows of the signal tower. Why didn't Uncle Jed light his lantern? Why hadn't he lowered the gates? All her fear of discovery was suddenly swallowed up in a greater fear.

At the foot of the crude wooden stairway she no longer hesitated.

"Uncle Jed!" she shouted against the wind, "Uncle Jed, are you there?"

There was no answer.

She climbed the steep steps and tried the door, which yielded grudgingly to her pressure. It was only when she put her shoulder to it and pushed with all her strength that she made an opening wide enough to squeeze through. There on the floor, lying just as he had fallen, was the old gate-tender, his unseeing eyes staring up into the semi-darkness.

Nance looked at him in terror, then at the signal board and the levers that controlled the gates. A terrible trembling seized her, and she covered her eyes with her hands.

"God tell me quick, what must I do?" she demanded, and the next instant, as if in answer to her prayer, she heard herself gasp, "Dan!" as she fumbled wildly for the telephone.



CHAPTER XXI

DAN

The shrill whistle that at noon had obtruded its discord into Nance Molloy's thoughts had a very different effect on Dan Lewis, washing his hands under the hydrant in the factory yard. He had not forgotten that it was Saturday. Neither had Growler, who stood watching him with an oblique look in his old eye that said as plain as words that he knew what momentous business was brewing at five o'clock.

It was not only Saturday for Dan, but the most important Saturday that ever figured on the calendar. In his heroic efforts to conform to Mrs. Purdy's standard of perfection he had studied the advice to young men in the "Sunday Echo." There he learned that no gentleman would think of mentioning love to a young lady until he was in a position to marry her. To-day's pay envelope would hold the exact amount to bring his bank account up to the three imposing figures that he had decided on as the minimum sum to be put away.

As he was drying his hands on his handkerchief and whistling softly under his breath, he was summoned to the office.

For the past year he had been a self-constituted buffer between Mr. Clarke and the men in the furnace-room, and he wondered anxiously what new complication had arisen.

"He's got an awful grouch on," warned the stenographer as Dan passed through the outer office.

Mr. Clarke was sitting at his desk, tapping his foot impatiently.

"Well, Lewis," he said, "you've taken your time! Sit down. I want to talk to you."

Dan dropped into the chair opposite and waited.

"Is it true that you have been doing most of the new foreman's work for the past month?"

"Well, I've helped him some. You see, being here so long, I know the ropes a bit better than he does."

"That's not the point. I ought to have known sooner that he could not handle the job. I fired him this morning, and we've got to make some temporary arrangement until a new man is installed."

Dan's face grew grave.

"We can manage everything but the finishing room. Some of the girls have been threatening to quit."

"What's the grievance now?"

"Same thing—ventilation. Two more girls fainted there this morning. The air is something terrible."

"What do they think I am running?" demanded Mr. Clarke, angrily, "a health resort?"

"No, sir," said Dan, "a death trap."

Mr. Clarke set his jaw and glared at Dan, but he said nothing. The doctor's recent verdict on the death of a certain one-eyed girl, named Mag Gist, may have had something to do with his silence.

"How many girls are in that room now?" he asked after a long pause.

Dan gave the number, together with several other disturbing facts concerning the sanitary arrangements.

"Well, what's to be done?" demanded Mr. Clarke, fiercely. "We can't get out the work with fewer girls, and there is no way of enlarging that room."

"Yes, sir, there is," said Dan. "Would you mind me showing you a way?"

"Since you are so full of advice, go ahead."

With crude, but sure, pencil strokes, Dan got his ideas on paper. He had done it so often for his own satisfaction that he could have made them with his eyes shut. Ever since those early days when he had seen that room through Nance Molloy's eyes, he had persisted in his efforts to better it.

Mr. Clarke, with his fingers thrust through his scanty hair, watched him scornfully.

"Absolutely impractical," he declared. "The only feasible plan would be to take out the north partition and build an extension like this."

"That couldn't be done," said Dan, "on account of the projection."

Whereupon, such is the power of opposition, Mr. Clarke set himself to prove that it could. For over an hour they wrangled, going into the questions of cost, of time, of heating, of ventilation, scarcely looking up from the plans until a figure in a checked suit flung open the door, letting in a draught of air that scattered the papers on the desk.

"Hello, Dad," said the new-comer, with a friendly nod to Dan, "I'm sorry to disturb you, but I only have a minute."

"Which I should accept gratefully, I suppose, as my share of your busy day?" Mr. Clarke tried to look severe, but his eyes softened.

"Well, I just got up," said Mac, with an ingratiating smile, as he smoothed back his shining hair before the mirror in the hat-rack.

"Running all night, and sleeping half the day!" grumbled Mr. Clarke. "By the way, what time did you get in last night?"

Mac made a wry face.

"Et tu, Brute?" he cried gaily. "Mother's polished me off on that score. I have not come here to discuss the waywardness of your prodigal son. Mr. Clarke, I have come to talk high finance. I desire to negotiate a loan."

"As usual," growled his father. "I venture to say that Dan Lewis here, who earns about half what you waste a year, has something put away."

"But Dan's the original grinder. He always had an eye for business. Used to win my nickel every Sunday when we shot craps in the alley back of the cathedral. Say, Dan, I see you've still got that handsome thoroughbred cur of yours! By George, that dog could use his tail for a jumping rope!"

Dan smiled; he couldn't afford to be sensitive about Growler's beauty.

"Is that all, Mr. Clarke?" he asked of his employer.

"Yes. I'll see what can be done with these plans. In the meanwhile you try to keep the girls satisfied until the new foreman comes. By the way I expect you'd better stay on here to-night."

Dan paused with his hand on the door-knob. "Yes, sir," he said in evident embarrassment, "but if you don't mind—I 'd like to get off for a couple of hours this afternoon."

"Who's the girl, Dan?" asked Mac, but Dan did not stop to answer.

As he hurried down the hall, a boy appeared from around the corner and beckoned to him with a mysterious grin.

"Somebody's waiting for you down in the yard."

"Who is he?"

"'T ain't a he. It's the prettiest girl you ever seen!"

Dan, whose thoughts for weeks had been completely filled with one feminine image, sprang to the window. But the tall, stylish person enveloped in a white veil, who was waiting below, in no remote way suggested Nance Molloy.

A call from a lady was a new experience, and a lively curiosity seized him as he descended the steps, turning down his shirt sleeves as he went. As he stepped into the yard, the girl turned toward him with a quick, nervous movement.

"Hello, Daniel!" she said, her full red lips curving into a smile. "Don't remember me, do you?"

"Sure, I do. It's Birdie Smelts."

"Good boy! Only now it's Birdie La Rue. That's my stage name, you know. I blew into town Thursday with 'The Rag Time Follies.' Say, Dan, you used to be a good friend of mine, didn't you?"

Dan had no recollection of ever having been noticed by Birdie, except on that one occasion when he had taken her and Nance to the skating-rink. She was older than he by a couple of years, and infinitely wiser in the ways of the world. But it was beyond masculine human nature not to be flattered by her manner, and he hastened to assure her that he had been and was her friend.

"Well, I wonder if you don't want to do me a favor?" she coaxed. "Find out if Mac Clarke's been here, or is going to be here. I got to see him on particular business."

"He's up in the office now," said Dan; then he added bluntly "Where did you ever know Mac Clarke?"

Birdie's large, white lids fluttered a moment.

"I come to see him for a friend of mine," she said.

A silence fell between them which she tried to break with a rather shame faced explanation.

"This girl and Mac have had a quarrel. I'm trying to patch it up. Wish you'd get him down here a minute."

"It would be a lot better for the girl," said Dan, slowly, "if you didn't patch it up."

"What do you mean?"

Dan looked troubled.

"Clarke's a nice fellow all right," he said, "but when it comes to girls—" he broke off abruptly. "Do you know him?"

"I've seen him round the theater," she said.

"Then you ought to know what I mean."

Birdie looked absently across the barren yard.

"Men are all rotten," she said bitterly, then added with feminine inconsistency, "Go on, Dan, be a darling. Fix it so I can speak to him without the old man catching on."

Strategic manoeuvers were not in Dan's line, and he might have refused outright had not Birdie laid a white hand on his and lifted a pair of effectively pleading eyes. Being unused to feminine blandishments, he succumbed.

Half an hour later a white veil fluttered intimately across a broad, checked shoulder as two stealthy young people slipped under the window of Mr. Clarke's private office and made their way to the street.

Dan gave the incident little further thought. He went mechanically about his work, only pausing occasionally at his high desk behind the door to pore over a sheet of paper. Had his employer glanced casually over his shoulder, he might have thought he was still figuring on the plans of the new finishing room; but a second glance would have puzzled him. Instead of one large room there were several small ones, and across the front was a porch with wriggly lines on a trellis, minutely labeled, "honeysuckle."

At a quarter of five Dan made as elaborate a toilet as the washroom permitted. He consumed both time and soap on the fractious forelock, and spent precious moments trying to induce a limp string tie to assume the same correct set that distinguished Mac Clarke's four-in-hand.

Once on his way, with Growler at his heels, he gave no more thought to his looks. He walked very straight, his lips twitching now and then into a smile, and his gaze soaring over the heads of the ordinary people whom he passed. For twenty-one years the book of life had proved grim reading, but to-day he had come to that magic page whereon is written in words grown dim to the eyes of age and experience, but perennially shining to the eyes of youth: "And then they were married and lived happily ever after."

"Take care there! Look where you are going!" exclaimed an indignant pedestrian as he turned the corner into Cemetery Street.

"Why, hello, Bean!" he said in surprise, bringing his gaze down to a stout man on crutches. "Glad to see you out again!"

"I ain't out," said the ex-foreman. "I'm all in. I've got rheumatism in every corner of me. This is what your old bottle factory did for me."

"Tough luck," said Dan sympathetically, with what attention he could spare from a certain doorway half up the square. "First time you've been out?"

"No; I've been to the park once or twice. Last night I went to a show." He was about to limp on when he paused. "By the way, Lewis, I saw an old friend of yours there. You remember that Molloy girl you used to run with up at the factory?"

Dan's mouth closed sharply. Bean's attitude toward the factory girls was an old grievance with him and had caused words between them on more than one occasion.

"Well, I'll be hanged," went on Bean, undaunted, "if she ain't doing a turn up at the Gaiety! She's a little corker all right, had the whole house going."

"You got another guess coming your way," said Dan, coldly, "the young lady you're talking about's not on the stage. She's working up here in Cemetery Street. I happen to be waiting for her now."

Bean whistled.

"Well, the drinks are on me. That girl at the Gaiety is a dead ringer to her. Same classy way of handling herself, same—" Something in Dan's eyes made him stop. "I got to be going," he said. "So long."

Dan waited patiently for ten minutes; then he looked at his watch. What could be keeping Nance? He whistled to Growler, who was making life miserable for a cat in a neighboring yard, and strolled past Miss Bobinet's door; then he returned to the corner. Bean's words had fallen into his dream like a pebble into a tranquil pool. What business had Bean to be remembering the way Nance walked or talked. Restlessly, Dan paced up and down the narrow sidewalk. When he looked at his watch again, it was five-thirty.

Only thirty more minutes in which to transact the most important business of his life! With a gesture of impatience he strode up to Miss Bobinet's door and rang the bell.

A wrinkled old woman, with one hand behind her ear, opened the door grudgingly.

"Nance Molloy?" she quavered in answer to his query. "What you want with her?"

"I'd like to speak with her a minute," said Dan.

"Are you her brother?"

"No."

"Insurance man?"

"No."

The old woman peered at him curiously.

"Who be you?" she asked.

"My name's Lewis."

"Morris?"

"No, Lewis!" shouted Dan, with a restraining hand on Growler, who was sniffing at the strange musty odors that issued from the half-open door.

"Well, she ain't here," said the old woman. "Took herself off last Wednesday, without a word to anybody."

"Last Wednesday!" said Dan, incredulously. "Didn't she send any word?"

"Sent for her money and said she wouldn't be back. You dog, you!" This to Growler who had insinuated his head inside the door with the fixed determination to run down that queer smell if possible.

Dan went slowly down the steps, and Growler, either offended at having had the door slammed in his face, or else sensing, dog-fashion, the sudden change in his master's mood, trotted soberly at his heels. There was no time now to go to Calvary Alley to find out what the trouble was. Nothing to do but go back to the factory and worry through the night, with all sorts of disturbing thoughts swarming in his brain. Nance had been all right the Saturday before, a little restless and discontented perhaps, but scarcely more so than usual. He remembered how he had counseled patience, and how hard it had been for him to keep from telling her then and there what was in his heart. He began to wonder uneasily if he had done right in keeping all his plans and dreams to himself. Perhaps if he had taken her into his confidence and told her what he was striving and saving for, she would have understood better and been happy in waiting and working with him. For the first time he began to entertain dark doubts concerning those columns of advice to young men in the "Sunday Echo."

Once back at the factory, he plunged into his work with characteristic thoroughness. It was strangely hot and still, and somewhere out on the horizon was a grumbling discontent. It was raining hard at eleven o'clock when he boarded a car for Butternut Lane, and by the time he reached the Purdy's corner, the lightning was playing sharply in the northwest.

He let himself in the empty house and felt his way up to his room, but he did not go to bed. Instead, he sat at his table and with stiff awkward fingers wrote letter after letter, each of which he tossed impatiently into the waste-basket. They were all to Nance, and they all tried in vain to express the pent-up emotion that had filled his heart for years. Somewhere down-stairs a clock struck one, but he kept doggedly at his task. Four o'clock found him still seated at the table, but his tired head had dropped on his folded arms, and he slept.

Outside the wind rose higher and higher, and the lightning split the heavens in blinding flashes. Suddenly a deafening crash of thunder shook the house, and Dan started to his feet. A moment later the telephone bell rang.

Half dazed, he stumbled down-stairs and took up the receiver.

"Hello, hello! Yes, this is Dan Lewis. What? I can't hear you. Who?" Then his back stiffened suddenly, and his voice grew tense, "Nance! Where are you? Is he dead? Who's with you? Don't be scared, I'm coming!" and, leaving the receiver dangling on the cord, he made one leap for the door.



CHAPTER XXII

IN THE SIGNAL TOWER

It seemed an eternity to Dan, speeding hatless, coatless, breathless through the storm, before he spied the red lights on the lowered gates at the crossing. Dashing to the signal tower, he took the steps two at a time. The small room was almost dark, but he could see Nance kneeling on the floor beside the big gatekeeper.

"Dan! Is it you?" she cried. "He ain't dead yet. I can feel him breathing. If the doctor would only come!"

"Who'd you call?"

"The first one in the book, Dr. Adair."

"But he's the big doctor up at the hospital; he won't come."

"He will too! I told him he had to. And the gates, I got 'em down. Don't stop to feel his heart, Dan. Call the doctor again!"

"The first thing to do is to get a light," said Dan. "Ain't there a lantern or something?"

"Strike matches, like I did. They are on the window-sill—only hurry—Dan, hurry!"

Dan went about his task in his own way, taking time to find an oil lamp on the shelf behind the door and deliberately lighting it before he took his seat at the telephone. As he waited for the connection, his puzzled, troubled eyes dwelt not on Uncle Jed, but on the crimson boots and fantastic cap of Uncle Jed's companion.

"Dr. Adair is on the way," he said quietly, when he hung up the receiver, "and a man is coming from the yards to look after the gates. Is he still breathing?"

"Only when I make him!" said Nance, pressing the lungs of the injured man. "There, Uncle Jed," she coaxed, "take another deep breath, just one time. Go on! Do it for Nance. One time more! That's right! Once more!"

But Uncle Jed was evidently very tired of trying to accommodate. The gasps came at irregular intervals.

"How long have you been doing this?" asked Dan, kneeling beside her.

"I don't know. Ever since I came."

"How did you happen to come?"

"I saw the lightning strike the bell. Oh, Dan! It was awful, the noise and the flash! Seemed like I 'd never get up the steps. And at first I thought he was dead and—"

"But who was with you? Where were you going?" interrupted Dan in bewilderment.

"I was passing—I was going home—I—" Her excited voice broke in a sob, and she impatiently jerked the sleeve of her rain-coat across her eyes.

In a moment Dan was all tenderness. For the first time he put his arm around her and awkwardly patted her shoulder.

"There," he said reassuringly, "don't try to tell me now. See! He's breathing more regular! I expect the doctor'll pull him through."

Nance's hands, relieved of the immediate necessity for action, were clasping and unclasping nervously.

"Dan," she burst out, "I got to tell you something! Birdie Smelts has got me a place in the 'Follies.' I been on a couple of nights. I'm going away with 'em in the morning."

Dan looked at her as if he thought the events of the wild night had deprived her of reason.

"You!" he said, "going on the stage?" Then as he took it in, he drew away from her suddenly as if he had received a lash across the face. "And you were going off without talking it over or telling me or anything?"

"I was going to write you, Dan. It was all so sudden."

His eyes swept her bedraggled figure with stern disapproval.

"Were you coming from the theater at this time in the morning?"

Uncle Jed moaned slightly, and they both bent over him in instant solicitude. But there was nothing to do, but wait until the doctor should come.

"Where had you been in those crazy clothes?" persisted Dan.

"I'd been to the carnival ball with Birdie Smelts," Nance blurted out. "I didn't know it was going to be like that, but I might 'a' gone anyway. I don't know. Oh, Dan, I was sick to death of being stuck away in that dark hole, waiting for something to turn up. I told you how it was, but you couldn't see it. I was bound to have a good time if I died for it!"

She dropped her head on her knees and sobbed unrestrainedly, while the wind shrieked around the shanty, and the rain dashed against the gradually lightening window-pane. After a while she flung back her head defiantly.

"Stop looking at me like that, Dan. Lots of girls go on the stage and stay good."

"I wasn't thinking about the stage," said Dan. "I was thinking about to-night. Who took you girls to that place?"

Nance dried her tears.

"I can't tell you that," she said uneasily.

"Why not?"

"It wouldn't be fair."

Dan felt the hot blood surge to his head, and the muscles of his hands tighten involuntarily. He forgot Uncle Jed; he forgot to listen for the doctor, or to worry about traffic that would soon be held up in the street below. The only man in the world for him at that moment was the scoundrel who had dared to take his little Nance into that infamous dance hall.

Nance caught his arm and, with a quick gesture, dropped her head on it.

"Dan," she pleaded, "don't be mad at me. I promise you I won't go to any more places like that. I knew it wasn't right all along. But I got to go on with the 'Follies,' It's the chance I been waiting for all these months. Maybe it's the only one that'll ever come to me! You ain't going to stand in my way, are you, Dan?"

"Tell me who was with you to-night!"

"No!" she whispered. "I can't. You mustn't ask me. I promise you I won't do it again. I don't want to go away leaving you thinking bad of me."

His clenched hands suddenly began to tremble so violently that he had to clasp them tight to keep her from noticing.

"I better get used to—to not thinking 'bout you at all," he said, looking at her with the stern eyes of a young ascetic.

For a time they knelt there side by side, and neither spoke. For over a year Dan had been like one standing still on the banks of a muddy stream, his eyes blinded to all but the shining goal opposite, while Nance was like one who plunges headlong into the current, often losing sight of the goal altogether, but now and again catching glimpses of it that sent her stumbling, fighting, falling forward.

At the sound of voices below they both scrambled to their feet. Dr. Adair and the man from the yards came hurriedly up the steps together, the former drawing off his gloves as he came. He was a compact, elderly man whose keen observant eyes swept the room and its occupants at a glance. He listened to Nance's broken recital of what had happened, cut her short when he had obtained the main facts, and proceeded to examine the patient.

"The worst injury is evidently to the right arm and shoulder; you'll have to help me get his shirt off. No—not that way!"

Dan's hands, so eager to serve, so awkward in the service, fumbled over their task, eliciting a groan from the unconscious man.

"Let me do it!" cried Nance, springing forward. "You hold him up, Dan, I can get it off."

"It's a nasty job," warned the doctor, with a mistrustful glance at the youthful, tear-stained face. "It may make you sick."

"What if it does?" demanded Nance, impatiently.

It was a long and distressing proceeding, and Dan tried not to look at her as she bent in absorbed detachment over her work. But her steady finger-touch, and her anticipation of the doctor's needs amazed him. It recalled the day at the factory, when she, little more than a child herself, had dressed the wounds of the carrying-in boy. Once she grew suddenly white and had to hurry to the door and let the wind blow in her face. He started up to follow her, but changed his mind. Instead he protested with unnecessary vehemence against her resuming the work, but she would not heed him.

"That's right!" said the doctor, approvingly. "Stick it out this time and next time it will not make you sick. Our next move is to get him home. Where does he live?"

"In Calvary Alley," said Dan, "back of the cathedral."

"Very good," said the doctor, "I'll run him around there in my machine as soon as that last hypodermic takes effect. Any family?"

Dan shook his head.

"He has, too!" cried Nance. "We're his family!"

The doctor shot an amused glance at her over his glasses; then he laid a kindly hand on her shoulder.

"I congratulate him on this part of it. You make a first class little nurse."

"Is he going to get well?" Nance demanded.

"It is too early to say, my dear. We will hope for the best. I will have one of the doctors come out from the hospital every day to see him, but everything will depend on the nursing."

Nance cast a despairing look at the bandaged figure on the floor; then she shot a look of entreaty at Dan. One showed as little response to her appeal as the other. For a moment she stood irresolute; then she slipped out of the room and closed the door behind her.

For a moment Dan did not miss her. When he did, he left Dr. Adair in the middle of a sentence and went plunging down the steps in hot pursuit.

"Nance!" he called, splashing through the mud. "Aren't you going to say good-by?"

She wheeled on him furiously, a wild, dishevelled, little figure, strung to the breaking point:

"No!" she cried, "I am not going to say good-by! Do you suppose I could go away with you acting like that? And who is there to nurse Uncle Jed, I'd like to know, but me? But I want to tell you right now, Dan Lewis, if ever another chance comes to get out of that alley, I'm going to take it, and there can't anybody in the world stop me!"



CHAPTER XXIII

CALVARY CATHEDRAL

"I don't take no stock in heaven havin' streets of gold," said Mrs. Snawdor. "It'll be just my luck to have to polish 'em. You needn't tell me if there's all that finery in heaven, they won't keep special angels to do the dirty work!"

She and Mrs. Smelts were scrubbing down the stairs of Number One, not as a matter of cleanliness, but for the social benefit to be derived therefrom. It was a Sunday morning institution with them, and served quite the same purpose that church-going does for certain ladies in a more exalted sphere.

"I hope the Bible's true," said Mrs. Smelts, with a sigh. "Where it says there ain't no marryin' nor givin' in marriage."

"Oh, husbands ain't so worse if you pick 'em right," Mrs. Snawdor said with the conviction of experience. "As fer me, I ain't hesitatin' to say I like the second-handed ones best."

"I suppose they are better broke in. But no other woman but me would 'a' looked at Mr. Smelts."

"You can't tell," said Mrs. Snawdor. "Think of me takin' Snawdor after bein' used to Yager an' Molloy! Why, if you'll believe me, Mr. Burks, lyin' there in bed fer four months now, takes more of a hand in helpin' with the childern than Snawdor, who's up an' around."

"Kin he handle hisself any better? Mr. Burks, I mean."

"Improvin' right along. Nance has got him to workin' on a patent now. It's got somethin' to do with a engine switch. Wisht you could see the railroad yards she's rigged up on his bed. The childern are plumb crazy 'bout it."

"Nance is gittin' awful pretty," Mrs. Smelts said. "I kinder 'lowed Dan Lewis an' her'd be makin' a match before this."

Mrs. Snawdor gathered her skirts higher about her ankles and transferred her base of operations to a lower step.

"You can't tell nothin' at all 'bout that girl. She was born with the bit 'tween her teeth, an' she keeps it there. No more 'n you git her goin' in one direction than she turns up a alley on you. It's night school now. There ain't a spare minute she ain't peckin' on that ole piece of a type-writer Ike Lavinski loaned her."

"She's got a awful lot of energy," sighed Mrs. Smelts.

"Energy! Why it's somethin' fierce! She ain't content to let nothin' stay the way it is. Wears the childern plumb out washin' 'em an' learnin' 'em lessons, an' harpin' on their manners. If you believe me, she's got William J. that hacked he goes behind the door to blow his nose!"

"It's a blessin' she didn't go off with them 'Follies,'" said Mrs. Smelts. "Birdie lost her job over two months ago, an' the Lord knows what she's livin' on. The last I heard of her she was sick an' stranded up in Cincinnati, an' me without so much as a dollar bill to send her!" And Mrs. Smelts sat down in a puddle of soap-suds and gave herself up to the luxury of tears.

At this moment a door on the third floor banged, and Nance Molloy, a white figure against her grimy surroundings, picked her way gingerly down the slippery steps. Her cheap, cotton skirt had exactly the proper flare, and her tailor-made shirtwaist was worn with the proud distinction of one who conforms in line, if not in material, to the mode of the day.

"Ain't she the daisy?" exclaimed Mrs. Snawdor, gaily, and even Mrs. Smelts dried her eyes, the better to appreciate Nance's gala attire.

"We're too swell to be Methodist any longer!" went on Mrs. Snawdor, teasingly. "We're turned 'Piscopal!"

"You ain't ever got the nerve to be goin' over to the cathedral," Mrs. Smelts asked incredulously.

"Sure, why not?" said Nance, giving her hat a more sophisticated tilt. "Salvation's as free there as it is anywhere."

It was not salvation, however, that was concerning Nance Molloy as she took her way jauntily out of the alley and, circling the square, joined the throng of well-dressed men and women ascending the broad steps of the cathedral.

From that day when she had found herself back in the alley, like a bit of driftwood that for a brief space is whirled out of its stagnant pool, only to be cast back again, she had planned ceaselessly for a means of escape. During the first terrible weeks of Uncle Jed's illness, her thoughts flew for relief sometimes to Dan, sometimes to Mac. And Dan answered her silent appeal in person, coming daily with his clumsy hands full of necessities, his strong arms ready to lift, his slow speech quickened to words of hope and cheer. Mac came only in dreams, with gay, careless eyes and empty, useless hands, and lips that asked more than they gave. Yet it was around Mac's shining head that the halo of romance oftenest hovered.

It was not until Uncle Jed grew better, and Dan's visits ceased, that Nance realized what they had meant to her. To be sure her efforts to restore things to their old familiar footing had been fruitless, for Dan refused stubbornly to overlook the secret that stood between them, and Nance, for reasons best known to herself, refused to explain matters.

But youth reckons time by heart-throbs, and during Uncle Jed's convalescence Nance found the clock of life running ridiculously slow. Through Ike Lavinski, whose favor she had won by introducing him to Dr. Adair, she learned of a night school where a business course could be taken without expense. She lost no time in enrolling and, owing to her thorough grounding of the year before, was soon making rapid progress. Every night on her way to school, she walked three squares out of her way on the chance of meeting Dan coming from the factory, and coming and going, she watched the cathedral, wondering if Mac still sang there.

One Sunday, toward the close of summer, she followed a daring impulse, and went to the morning service. She sat in one of the rear pews and held her breath as the procession of white-robed men and boys filed into the choir. Mac Clarke was not among them, and she gave a little sigh of disappointment, and wondered if she could slip out again.

On second thought she decided to stay. Even in the old days when she had stolen into the cathedral to look for nickels under the seats, she had been acutely aware of "the pretties." But she had never attended a service, or seen the tapers lighted, and the vast, cool building, with its flickering lights and disturbing music, impressed her profoundly.

Presently she began to make discoveries: the meek apologetic person tip-toeing about lowering windows was no other than the pompous and lordly Mason who had so often loomed over her as an avenging deity. In the bishop, clad in stately robes, performing mysterious rites before the altar, she recognized "the funny old guy" with the bald head, with whom she had compared breakfast menus on a historical day at the graded school.

So absorbed was she in these revelations that she did not notice that she was sitting down while everybody else was standing up, until a small black book was thrust over her shoulder and a white-gloved finger pointed to the top of the page. She rose hastily and tried to follow the service. It seemed that the bishop was reading something which the people all around her were beseeching the Lord to hear. She didn't wonder that the Lord had to be begged to listen. She wasn't going to listen; that was one thing certain.

Then the organ pealed forth, and voices caught up the murmuring words and lifted them and her with them to the great arched ceiling. As long as the music lasted, she sat spell-bound, but when the bishop began to read again, this time from a book resting on the out-stretched wings of a big brass bird, her attention wandered to the great stained glass window above the altar. The reverse side of it was as familiar to her as the sign over Slap Jack's saloon. From the alley it presented opaque blocks of glass above the legend that had been one of the mysteries of her childhood. Now as she looked, the queer figures became shining angels with lilies in their hands, and she made the amazing discovery that "Evol si dog," seen from the inside, spelled "God is Love."

She sat quite still, pondering the matter. The bishop and the music and even Mac were for the time completely forgotten. Was the world full of things like that, puzzling and confused from the outside, and simple and easy from within? Within what? Her mind groped uncertainly along a strange path. So God was love? Why hadn't the spectacled lady told her so that time in the juvenile court instead of writing down her foolish answer? But love had to do with sweethearts and dime novels and plays on the stage. How could God be that? Maybe it meant the kind of love Mr. Demry had for his little daughter, or the love that Dan had for his mother, or the love she had for the Snawdor baby that died. Maybe the love that was good was God, and the love that was bad was the devil, maybe—

Her struggle with these wholly new and perplexing problems was interrupted by the arrival of a belated worshiper, who glided into the seat beside her and languidly knelt in prayer. Nance's attention promptly leaped from moral philosophy to clothes. Her quick eyes made instant appraisal of the lady's dainty costume, then rested in startled surprise on her lowered profile. The straight delicate features, slightly foreign, the fair hair rippling from the neck, were disconcertingly familiar. But when Nance saw her full face, with the petulant mouth and wrinkled brow, the impression vanished.

After a long time the service came to an end, and just as Nance was waiting to pass out, she heard some one say:

"When do you expect your son home, Mrs. Clarke? We miss him in the choir."

And the fair-haired lady in front of her looked up and smiled, and all her wrinkles vanished as she said:

"We expect him home before next Sunday, if the naughty boy doesn't disappoint us again!"

Nance waited to hear no more, but fled into the sunlight and around the corner, hugging her secret. She was not going to let Mr. Mac see her, she assured herself; she was just going to see him, and hear him sing.

When the next Sunday morning came, it found her once more hurrying up the broad steps of the cathedral. She was just in time, for as she slipped into a vacant pew, the notes of the organ began to swell, and from a side door came the procession of choir boys, headed by Mac Clarke carrying a great cross of gold.

Nance, hiding behind the broad back of the man in front of her, watched the procession move into the chancel, and saw the members of the choir file into their places. She had no interest now in the bishop's robes or the lighted tapers or cryptic inscriptions. Throughout the long service her attention was riveted on the handsome, white-robed figure which sat in a posture of bored resignation, wearing an expression of Christian martyrdom.

When the recessional sounded, she rose with the rest of the congregation, still keeping behind the protecting back of the man in front. But when she saw Mac lift the shining cross and come toward her down the chancel steps at the head of the singing procession, something made her move suddenly to the end of the pew, straight into the shaft of light that streamed through the great west window.

Mac, with his foot on the lowest step, paused for the fraction of a second, and the cross that he held swayed slightly. Then he caught step again and moved steadily forward.

Nance hurried away before the benediction. She was never going to do it again, she promised herself repeatedly. And yet, how wonderful it had been! Straight over the heads of the congregation for their eyes to meet like that, and for him to remember as she was remembering!

For three weeks she kept her promise and resolutely stayed away from the cathedral. One would have to be "goin' on nineteen" and live in Calvary Alley to realize the heroic nature of her moral struggle. Victory might have been hers in the end, had not Dan Lewis for the first time in years, failed one Saturday to spend his half-holiday with her. He had come of late, somber and grimly determined to give her no peace until he knew the truth. But Dan, even in that mood, was infinitely better than no Dan at all. When he sent her word that he was going with some of the men from the factory up the river for a swim, she gave her shoulders a defiant shrug, and set to work to launder her one white dress and stove-polish her hat, with the pleasing results we have already witnessed through the eyes of Mrs. Snawdor and Mrs. Smelts.

There is no place where a flirtation takes quicker root or matures more rapidly than in ecclesiastical soil. From the moment Nance entered the cathedral on that third Sunday, she and Mac were as acutely aware of each other's every move as if they had been alone together in the garden of Eden. At first she tried to avert her eyes, tried not to see his insistent efforts to attract her attention, affected not to know that he was singing to her, and watching her with impatient delight.

Then the surging notes of the organ died away, the bishop ascended the pulpit, and the congregation settled down to hear the sermon. From that time on Nance ceased to be discreet. There was glance for glance, and smile for smile, and the innumerable wireless messages that youth has exchanged since ardent eyes first sought each other across forbidden spaces.

It was not until the end of the sermon that Nance awoke to the fact that it was high time for Cinderella to be speeding on her way. Seizing a moment when the choir's back was turned to the congregation, she slipped noiselessly out of the cathedral and was fleeing down the steps when she came face to face with Monte Pearce.

"Caught at last!" he exclaimed, planting himself firmly in her way. "I've been playing watchdog for Mac for three Sundays. What are you doing in town?"

"In town?"

"Yes; we thought you were on the road with the 'Follies.' When did you get back?"

"You're seeking information, Mr. Monte Carlo," said Nance, with a smile. "Let me by. I've got to go home."

"I'll go with you. Where do you live?"

"Under my hat."

"Well, I don't know a nicer place to be." Monte laughed and looked at her and kept on laughing, until she felt herself blushing up to the roots of her hair.

"Honest, Mr. Monte, I got to go on," she said appealingly. "I'm in no end of a hurry."

"I can go as fast as you can," said Monte, his cane tapping each step as he tripped briskly down beside her. "I've got my orders from Mac. I'm to stay with you, if you won't stay with me. Which way?"

In consternation for fear the congregation should be dismissed before she could get away, and determined not to let him know where she lived, she jumped aboard a passing car.

"So be it!" said her plump companion, settling himself comfortably on the back seat beside her. "Now tell your Uncle Monte all about it!"

"There's nothing to tell!" declared Nance, with the blush coming back. She was finding it distinctly agreeable to be out alone like this with a grandly sophisticated young gentleman who wore a light linen suit with shoes to match, and whose sole interest seemed to center upon her and her affairs.

"But you know there is!" he persisted. "What made you give us the shake that night of the ball?"

Nance refused to say; so he changed the subject.

"How's Miss Birdie?"

"Give it up. Haven't seen her since you have."

"What? Didn't you go on with the show that next morning?"

"No."

"And you've been in town all summer?"

She nodded, and her companion gave a low, incredulous whistle.

"Well, I'll be darned!" he said. "And old Mac sending letters and telegrams every few minutes and actually following the 'Follies' to Boston!"

"Birdie was with 'em up to two months ago," said Nance.

"Mac wasn't after Birdie!" said Monte. "He hasn't had but one idea in his cranium since that night of the carnival ball. I never saw him so crazy about a girl as he is about you."

"Yes, he is!" scoffed Nance, derisively, but she let Monte run on at length, painting in burning terms the devastating extent of Mac's passion, his despair at losing her, his delight at finding her again, and his impatience for an interview.

When Monte finished she looked at him sidewise out of her half-closed eyes.

"Tell him I've gone on a visit to my rich aunt out to the sea-shore in Kansas."

"Give him another show," coaxed Monte. "We were all a bit lit up that night at the ball."

"No, we weren't either!" Nance flashed. "I hadn't had a thing, but one glass of beer, and you know it! I hate your old fizz-water!"

"Well, make it up with Mac. He's going back to college next month, and he's wild to see you."

"Tell him I haven't got time. Tell him I'm studying instrumental."

Nance was fencing for time. Her cool, keen indifference gave little indication of the turmoil that was going on within. If she could manage to see Mac without letting him know where she lived, without Dan's finding it out—

The car compassed the loop and started on the return trip.

"Where do we get off?" asked Monte.

"I'm not getting off anywhere until after you do."

"I've got lots of nickels."

"I've got lots of time!" returned Nance, regardless of her former haste.

At Cathedral Square, Monte rang the bell.

"Have it your own way," he said good-naturedly. "But do send a message to Mac."

Nance let him get off the back platform; then she put her head out of the window.

"You tell him," she called, "that he can't kill two birds with one stone!"



CHAPTER XXIV

BACK AT CLARKE'S

The promotion of Uncle Jed from the bed to a pair of crutches brought about two important changes in the house of Snawdor. First, a financial panic caused by the withdrawal of his insurance money, and, second, a lightening of Nance's home duties that sent her once more into the world to seek a living.

By one of those little ironies in which life seems to delight, the only opportunity that presented itself lay directly in the path of temptation. A few days after her interview with Monte Pearce, Dan came to her with an offer to do some office work at the bottle factory. The regular stenographer was off on a vacation, and a substitute was wanted for the month of September.

"Why, I thought you'd be keen about it," said Dan, surprised at her hesitation.

"Oh! I'd like it all right, but—"

"You needn't be afraid to tackle it," Dan urged. "Mr. Clarke's not as fierce as he looks; he'd let you go a bit slow at first."

"He wouldn't have to! I bet I've got as much speed now as the girl he's had. It's not the work."

"I know how you feel about the factory," said Dan, "and I wouldn't want you to go back in the finishing room. The office is different. You take my word for it; it's as nice a place as you could find."

They were standing on the doorless threshold of Number One, under the fan-shaped arch through which the light had failed to shine for twenty years. From the room on the left came the squeak of Mr. Demry's fiddle and the sound of pattering feet, synchronizing oddly with the lugubrious hymn in which Mrs. Smelts, in the room opposite, was giving vent to her melancholy.

Nance, eager for her chance, yearning for financial independence, obsessed by the desire to escape from the dirt and disorder and confusion about her, still hesitated.

"If you're afraid I'm going to worry you," said Dan, fumbling with his cap, "I can keep out of your way all right."

In an instant her impulsive hand was on his arm.

"You shut up, Dan Lewis!" she said sharply. "What makes me want to take the job most is our coming home together every night like we used to."

Dan's eyes, averted until now, lifted with sudden hope.

"But I got a good reason for not coming," she went on stubbornly. "It hasn't got anything to do with you or the work."

"Can't you tell me, Nance?"

The flicker of hope died out of his face as she shook her head. He looked down the alley for a moment; then he turned toward her with decision:

"See here, Nance," he said earnestly, "I don't know what your reason is, but I know that this is one chance in a hundred. I want you to take this job. If I come by for you to-morrow morning, will you be ready?"

Still she hesitated.

"Let me decide it for you," he insisted, "will you, Nance?"

She looked up into his earnest eyes, steadfast and serious as a collie's.

"All right!" she said recklessly, "have it your own way!"

The first day in Mr. Clarke's office was one of high tension. Added to the trepidation of putting her newly acquired business knowledge to a practical test, was the much more disturbing possibility that at any moment Mac might happen upon the scene. Just what she was going to do and say in such a contingency she did not know. Once when she heard the door open cautiously, she was afraid to lift her eyes. When she did, surprise took the place of fear.

"Why, Mrs. Smelts!" she cried. "What on earth are you doing here?"

Birdie's mother, faded and anxious, and looking unfamiliar in bonnet and cape, was evidently embarrassed by Nance's unexpected presence.

"He sent for me," she said, nervously, twitching at the fringe on her cape. "I wrote to his wife, but he sent word fer me to come here an' see him at ten o'clock. Is it ten yet?"

"Mr. Clarke sent for you?" Nance began incredulously; then remembering that a stenographer's first business is to attend to her own, she crossed the room with quite a professional manner and tapped lightly on the door of the inner office.

For half an hour the usually inaccessible president of the bottle factory and the scrub woman from Calvary Alley held mysterious conclave; then the door opened again, and Mrs. Smelts melted into the outer passage as silently as she had come.

Nance, while frankly curious, had little time to indulge in idle surmise. All her faculties were bent on mastering the big modern type-writer that presented such different problems from the ancient machine on which she had pounded out her lessons. She didn't like this sensitive, temperamental affair that went off half-cocked at her slightest touch, and did things on its own account that she was in the habit of doing herself.

Her first dictation left her numb with terror. She heard Mr. Clarke repeating with lightning rapidity phrases which she scarcely comprehended: "Enclose check for amount agreed upon." "Matter settled once and for all." "Any further annoyance to be punished to full extent of the law."

"Shall I address an envelope?" she asked, glancing at the "Dear Madam" at the top of the page.

"No," said Mr. Clarke, sharply, "I'll attend to that."

Other letters followed, and she was soon taking them with considerable speed. When mistakes occurred they could usually be attributed to the graded school which, during its brief chance at Nance, had been more concerned in teaching her the names and the lengths of the rivers of South America than in teaching her spelling.

At the noon hour Mr. Clarke departed, and she stood by the window eating her lunch and watching the men at work on the new wing. The old finishing room was a thing of the past, and Dan's dream of a light, well-ventilated workroom for the girls was already taking definite form. She could see him now in the yard below, a blue-print in his hand, explaining to a group of workmen some detail of the new building. One old glass-blower, peering at the plan through heavy, steel-rimmed spectacles, had his arm across Dan's shoulder. Nance smiled tenderly. Dear Dan! Everybody liked him—even those older men from the furnace-room who had seen him promoted over their heads. She leaned forward impulsively and called to him.

"Danny!" she cried, "here's an apple. Catch!"

He caught it dexterously in his left hand, gave her a casual nod, then went gravely on with the business in hand. Nance sighed and turned away from the window.

In the afternoon the work went much easier. She was getting used to Mr. Clarke's quick, nervous speech and abrupt manner. She was beginning to think in sentences instead of words. All was going famously when a quick step sounded in the passage without, followed by a gaily whistled tune, and the next instant the door behind her was flung open.

Mr. Clarke went steadily on with his dictation, but the new stenographer ceased to follow. With bent head and lips caught between her teeth, she made futile efforts to catch up, but she only succeeded in making matters worse.

"That will do for this afternoon," said Mr. Clarke, seeing her confusion. "Make a clear copy of that last letter and put it on my desk." Then he turned in his chair and glared over his shoulder. "Well, Mac!" he said, "I've waited for you just one hour and thirty-five minutes."

"Dead sorry, Dad. Didn't know it was so late," said the new-comer, blithely. "How long before you are going home?"

"Ten minutes. I've got to go over to the new building first. Don't go until I return. There's something I want to see you about."

Nance heard the door close as Mr. Clarke went out; then she waited in a tremor, half trepidation, half glee, for Mac to recognize her. He was moving about restlessly, first in one office, then in the other, and she could feel his bright inquisitive eyes upon her from different angles. But she kept her face averted, changing her position as he changed his. Presently he came to a halt near her and began softly to whistle the little-bear dance from the "Rag-Time Follies." She smiled before she knew it, and the next instant he was perched on the corner of her desk, demanding rapturously to know what she was doing there, and swearing that he had recognized her the moment he entered the room.

"Let go my hand, Mr. Mac!" she implored in laughing confusion.

"I'm afraid to! You might give me the slip again. I've been scouring the town for you and to think I should find you here!"

"Look out!" warned Nance. "You're upsetting the ink-bottle!"

"What do I care? Gee, this is luck! You ought to see my new racer, a regular peach! Will you come out with me sometime?"

"Will you let me run it?"

"I'll let you do anything you like with anything I've got," he declared with such ardor that she laughed and regretted it the next moment.

"Now look here, Mr. Mac!" she said, severely, "you touch me again, and I quit to-night. See?"

"I'll be good. I'll do anything you say if you'll just stay and play with me."

"Play nothing! I've got work to do."

"Work be hanged! Do you suppose when I haven't seen you for four months that I'm not going to claim my inning?"

"Well, I want to tell you right here," she said, shaking a warning pencil in his face, "that I mean what I say about your behaving yourself."

Mac caught the end of the pencil and held it while their eyes challenged each other.

"So be it!" he said. "I promise to be a model of discretion. Nance, I've been mad about you! Did Monte tell you—"

"Mr. Monte didn't tell me anything I wanted to hear," she said in her cool, keen way, as she got the imperiled ink-well to a place of safety, and straightened the other articles on the desk.

"You wouldn't be so down on a fellow if you knew how hard hit I am," persisted Mac. "Besides, I'm in for an awful row with the governor. You may see my scalp fly past the window in less than ten minutes."

"What's the row about?"

"Same old thing. I am the original devil for getting found out." For the space of a minute he gloomily contemplated a spot in the carpet; then he shrugged his shoulders, rammed his hands in his pockets, and began to whistle.

"The governor'll fork out," he said. "He always does. Say, Nance, you haven't said a word about my moustache."

"Let's see it," said Nance in giggling derision. "Looks like a baby's eyebrow. Does it wash off?"

A step in the hall sent them flying in opposite directions, Nance back to her desk, and Mac into the inner office, where his father found him a moment later, apparently absorbed in a pamphlet on factory inspection.

When Nance started home at six o'clock, she found Dan waiting at his old post beside the gas-pipe.

"It's like old times," he said happily, as he piloted her through the out-pouring throng. "I remember the first night we walked home together. You weren't much more than a kid. You had on a red cap with a tassel to it. Three years ago the tenth of last May. Wouldn't think it, would you?"

"Think what?" she asked absently.

"Tired?" he asked anxiously. "Is the work going to be too heavy?"

She shook her head impatiently.

"No, the work's all right. But—but I wish you hadn't made me come back, Dan."

"Stick it out for a week," he urged, "and then if you want to stop, I won't say a word."

She looked up at him quizzically and gave a short enigmatic laugh.

"That's my trouble," she said, "if I stick it out for a week, I won't be wanting to quit!"



CHAPTER XXV

MAC

Nance's prophecy regarding herself was more than fulfilled. Whatever scruples had assailed her at the start were soon overthrown by the on-rushing course of events. That first month in Mr. Clarke's office proved to be a time of delightful madness. There were daily meetings with Mac at the noon hour, stolen chats on street corners, thrilling suppers with him and Monte at queer cafes, and rides after dark in that wonderful racer that proved the most enticing of playthings.

Dan was as busy as Mac was idle; Mr. Clarke was gloomy and preoccupied; Mrs. Snawdor was in bed when Nance left home in the morning, and gone to work when she returned in the evening. The days flashed by in a glorious succession of forbidden joys, with nobody to interrupt the furious progress of affairs.

Half of her salary Nance gave to her stepmother, and the other half she spent on clothes. She bought with taste and discrimination, measuring everything by the standard set up by her old idol, Miss Stanley at Forest Home. The result was that she soon began to look very much like the well-dressed women with whom she touched elbows on the avenue.

She had indeed got the bit between her teeth, and she ran at full tilt, secure in the belief that she had full control of the situation. As long as she gave satisfaction in her work, she told herself, and "behaved right," she could go and come as she liked, and nobody would be the worse for it.

She did not realize that her scoffing disbelief in Mac's avowals, and her gay indifference were the very things that kept him at fever heat. He was not used to being thwarted, and this high-handed little working-girl, with her challenging eyes and mocking laugh, who had never heard of the proprieties, and yet denied him favors, was the first person he had ever known who refused absolutely to let him have his own way. With a boy's impetuous desire he became obsessed by the idea of her. When he was not with her, he devised schemes to remind her of him, making love to her by proxy in a dozen foolish, whimsical ways. When it was not flowers or candy, it was a string of nonsense verses laid between the pages of her type-writer paper, sometimes a clever caricature of himself or Monte, and always it was love notes in the lining of her hat, in her gloves, in her pocket-book. She was afraid to raise her umbrella for fear a rain of tender missives would descend therefrom. Once he gave her a handsome jeweled bracelet which she wore under her sleeve. But he got hard up before the week was over and borrowed it back and pawned it.

Of two things Nance succeeded in keeping him in ignorance. During all their escapades he never discovered where she lived, and he never suspected her friendship for Dan Lewis. He was not one to concern himself with troublesome details. The pleasure of the passing moment was his sole aim in life.

And Nance, who ordinarily scorned subterfuge and hated a secret, succeeded not only in keeping him in ignorance of Dan; but with even greater strategy managed to keep Dan in complete ignorance of the whole situation. Dan, to be sure, took his unconscious revenge. His kind, puzzled eyes haunted her dreams, and the thought of him proved the one disturbing element in these halcyon days. In vain she told herself that he was an old fogy, that he had Sunday-school notions, that he wouldn't be able to see anything but wrong in a harmless flirtation that would end with Mac's return to college. But would it end? That was a question Nance was beginning to ask herself with curious misgiving.

The last of the month rolled round with incredible swiftness. It brought to Nance not only an end to all her good times, but the disheartening knowledge that she would soon be out of employment again with no money saved, and under the self-imposed necessity of making a clean breast of her misdeeds to Dan Lewis.

On the Saturday before Mac's intended departure, as she sat at her desk ruefully facing the situation, he rushed into the office.

"Has a mean-looking little Jew been in here this morning?" he demanded breathlessly.

"Nobody's been here," said Nance.

"Gloree!" said Mac, collapsing into a chair. "He gave me a scare! Wonder if he 'phoned!"

"Mr. Clarke's been out all morning. These are the people who called up."

Mac ran his eye hurriedly down the list and sighed with relief. Then he got up and went to the window and stood restlessly tapping the pane.

"I've a good notion to go East to-night," he said, half to himself, "no use waiting until Monday."

Nance glanced at him quickly.

"What's up?" she asked.

"Money, as usual," said Mac in an aggrieved tone. "Just let me get ready to leave town, and fellows I never heard of turn up with bills. I could stand off the little fellows, but Meyers is making no end of a stew. He holds a note of mine for five hundred and sixty dollars. It was due yesterday, and he swore that if I didn't smoke up by noon to-day, he'd come to the governor."

"Won't he give you an extension?"

"He's given me two already. It's the money I lost last spring at the races. That's the reason I can't get it out of the governor. It looks as if it were about time for little Willie to take to the tall timbers."

Nance got up from her desk and joined him at the window. There was something she had been burning to say to him for ten days, but it was something she found it very hard to say. He might tell her it was none of her business; he might even not like her any more.

"See here, Mr. Mac," she said, bracing herself for the ordeal, "did it ever strike you that you spend a lot of money that don't belong to you?"

"It'll all be mine some day," said Mac reassuringly. "If the governor would listen to mother, we'd never have these financial rackets. She knows that it takes a lot for a fellow to live right."

"It takes a lot more for him to live wrong," said Nance, stoutly. "You get a whacking big allowance; when you get to the end of it, why don't you do like some of the rest of us—go without the things you can't pay for?"

"I am going to," said Mac as if the idea was a new one. "Once I get squared up, you bet I'll stay so. But that doesn't help me out of this mess. The money has got to come from somewhere, and I tell you I haven't got a sou!"

Nance had never seen him so perturbed. He usually approached these conflicts with his father with a passing grimace, exhibited sufficient repentance to get what he wanted, and emerged more debonair than ever. It was disturbing to see him so serious and preoccupied.

"I bet your father'd help you if he thought you'd make a new start," she said.

Mac shook his head.

"He would have a month ago. But he's got it in for me now. He believes an idiotic story that was cocked up about me, and he's just waiting for my next slip to spring a mine on me. I got to keep him from finding out until I'm gone; that's all there is to it!"

He fumbled in his pocket for a match and instead drew out a bank-note.

"By George! here's a lonesome five-spot I didn't know I had! I believe I'll play it on the races and see what it'll do for me. Maybe it's a mascot."

His momentary depression was gone, and he was eager to be off. But Nance stood between him and the door, and there was a dangerous light in her eyes.

"Do you know," she said, "I've a good mind to tell you what I think of you?"

He caught her hand. "Do, Nance! And make it nice. It's going to be no end of a grind to leave you. Say something pretty that I can live on 'til Christmas. Tell me I'm the sweetest fellow that ever lived. Go on. Make love to me, Nance!"

"I think you are a short-sport!" she burst forth. "Any fellow that'll go on making debts when he can't pay his old ones, that'll get things in a muddle and run off and let somebody else face the racket is a coward—I think—"

"Help! Help!" cried Mac, throwing up an arm in pretended defense, and laughing at her flashing eyes and blazing cheeks. "By jinks, I don't know whether you look prettiest when you are mad or when you are glad. If you don't stop this minute I'll have to kiss you!"

The anger in Nance's face faded into exasperation. She felt suddenly hot and uncomfortable and a little ashamed of her violence. She had neither offended him nor humiliated him; she had simply amused him. Tears of chagrin sprang to her eyes, and she turned away abruptly.