The book quite frankly disclosed the terrors as well as the joys of the game. It was most disconcerting to read of

"The Distempers and Insects that Attack....The great Enemies are Rabbets, Garden Mise, Moles, Caterpillars, Maybugs, Ants, Snails, Turks, Canthardies and an abundance of weeds, the names of which are unknown to us—"

She shouted with youthful laughter as she read it, the echoes of her merriment sounding through the empty halls. She doubled her little fist and shook it toward the candle, flickering low in its socket.

"That's what has hidden the garden," she murmured, "that's why I can't see it—" she wrinkled her nose in disgust. "—Abundance-of-weeds— Piqueur and Bele will settle you!"

All through the verdant spring, all through the quick hot summer the girl puzzled over the unanswered riddle—the scheme of the garden. Piqueur and Bele and Margot toiled valiantly pulling up the myriad abundance-of-weeds, but in vain. It was not until the resplendent autumn had passed that she had any inkling of the real pattern. There came a glorious moonlit night, a chilly night when she snuggled under the blankets and yawned over the chapter that told her "how to mulch plants for winter." The wind blew so chill that at midnight she pattered across the old carpet to make the casement fast. The whole cleared space below her glistened with the fairy glamour of the first frost. Under the magic silvery whiteness the lost "parterres and cabinets and lozenges" with their paths and borders stood out as clearly in the moonlight as the day when Madame Prudence's workmen had charted them there. She laughed aloud as she ran back and turned to the map labelled "The twentieth and laft practife which is the most superb and which is The Bifected Oval."

"Oh, Oh!" she murmured as she leaned across the stone sill, unmindful of the cold, to blow a tiny kiss to the fountain cupid, "How stupid I was not to see! You just live in half the oval and the kitchen garden and the stables are the other half—"

She could scarcely wait for morning to impart her wonderful news to Grandy and the others.

"Some say it can be done within five years, but ye author believes from experiences both at Versailles and in ye south of England that a decade or more is necessary to establish any garden—"

Which warning from the fat brown leather book made it easier for Felice, you see, because she never hoped to accomplish the garden in a little time. Besides, Piqueur was, as Octavia had foretold "too old." But it was Margot—oh, heaven-sent Margot, and the adoring, clumsy Bele who toiled like four men, and so cabinet by cabinet, parterre by parterre, terrace by terrace, the superb old garden began to grow lovely once more.

Think of the victory of the summer when the hedges were at last properly trimmed! Think of the joy of the flatly rolled turf, the spring that they found a massive iron roller in an unused shed at the back of the carriage house! Think of the wonder of that day when the little fountain laughed again, its pipe unchoked and its overflow trickling neatly away under the hidden terra-cotta drains!

The busy days lost themselves in weeks, the weeks dripped endlessly from season to season. By the time the second spring had come it was as though Felicia had lived in the House in the Woods forever.

The only links with the old life were the two or three visits of Certain Legal Matters; and as Felice hated him as much as ever she hid herself all she could during his short stays.

It was during his second visit that Felicia had her first real encounter with the doughty lawyer. It was in March that he came, and Felicia and Margot were deep in their spring plans. They needed a great many things that they didn't have for the garden. It was practical Margot who suggested casually,

"Why couldn't you ask Mr. Burrel? He could send them to the junction and I could go with the oxen—I have always asked him for vegetable seeds when I sent the spring list of supplies—write in a paper, Cherie, all that we need—put down the roses and the trees and the lily bulbs and all—tell him that he must send them."

She was rather cunning about it, was Felice. She waited until the lawyer was strolling impatiently in the gallery waiting for the cart to drive around from the stable. She approached him boldly, holding out her list.

"These are some things we need for our garden," she said. "You will please have them sent at once."

He stared at the imperious young creature. It was the first time she had ever voluntarily spoken with him. He took the list. He was very ill at ease.

"I am not certain," he began as he stared amazed at the lengthy order, "that I can arrange for—er—"

Inwardly quaking Felice answered him. Her low voice sounded astonishingly calm to her.

"But we must have them," she announced. She played her trump card valiantly, "You can give it back to me if you can't get them, I have another person—who can attend to—Certain Legal Matters for me—" Her voice trailed faintly, she was really rather frightened.

"May I ask whom?" the lawyer demanded in amazement.

"I know where he is," she asserted childishly. "He is in Temple Bar, Brooklyn, and he would get them for me quickly, I'm sure. You see, in April we shall need these things for the planting. He told me—" she added this with delicious positiveness, "to remember to let him know if you did not manage things properly."

The cart had clattered around now, Piqueur was waiting politely. The lawyer frankly gaped at her, his eyes narrowed. He looked very pale in the afternoon light. His thick hand reached out for the list.

"I—I will see that you get what you wish, Miss Felicia—" he capitulated. "You do not need to ask any one else about it—I'm glad to do you the favor—"

And all the way across the Pine Plains to the station he questioned Piqueur as to whether the Major or Felice had had any visitors. But Piqueur, who had always hated the lawyer, cunningly evaded the cross- examination. And in less than a week after Burrel's departure Margot drove the ox-cart across the plains and brought it back fairly laden with florists' crates and boxes.

Life was not all easy. Keeping the Major happy grew more and more difficult. If Felicia found the House in the Woods joyous, he did not. He brooded restlessly save for the hours they spent together over the chess board or at dinner; sometimes he slowly paced the long gallery or the hallways, but more often he sat gloomily, his hand on his cane, his chin resting on his hand and looked sadly across the terrace where Felice directed her workers. He, like Piqueur, was growing "too old." He was really seventy-four that summer. Margot knew when his birthday came and tried to make a little feast but he ignored it. He tried to pretend a polite interest in the reconstruction of the garden but his heart was not in it. He liked better to sit indoors in his carved chair. Even on the warmest days when evening came he wanted a fire kindled on the chilly marble hearth.

Felicia labored patiently at "making him happy." She had long since made him a partner in her own game that she called pretending. "Pretending" just as in the old days when she had played with Maman. Of course, she had to whistle to pretend and he still affected a scorn of the whistling he had once forbidden. The "pretending" usually took place directly after dinner. She would kiss the top of his forehead audaciously and dance before him with a deep curtsy.

"Let's pretend, Grandy! Let's pretend I'm not Felice! Let's pretend I'm a blanchisseuse—that's a washerlady. This is a thing that Piqueur's mother learned in France when she was young—whenever Margot and I spread our linen on the grass to bleach we whistle this—"

Or sometimes she would demurely assure him that she was, "—a girl who's pulling roses to sell the man who makes perfume—" She would snatch up her needlework basket and swing it at her hip and pull the roses down from the mantelpiece vases and all the while she would whistle, with her dear little chin perkily lifted and her sparkling eyes watching to see if the Major was listening.

The song he liked best of all was the song of the hunt. I think he liked the audacity with which she appropriated his peaked hat and perched it jauntily on her own head and caught away his cane to use for a riding crop. "This song," she would explain joyously, "is for autumn, when all the men and women are waiting on their restless horses for the master of the hunt to blow his horn—" Her cupped hands at her lips made a beautiful horn and her whistle rang valiantly in the great ceilinged room but the hunting song usually lost itself in a whirr of laughter and frills as the huntress dropped breathless on the footstool at the Major's side and put her sleek head against his knee.

"Grandy," she whispered once, "You stub-stub-stubborn man! Why don't you learn to pretend! Why don't you make believe they're all here?" she waved her hand toward the portraits around them! "I pretend they're proud, proud, proud I'm here! It must have been vairee stupid for them before I came!"

The Major was not her only audience. She frequently "pretended" for Margot and Piqueur and Bele, prancing gaily-about them in their snug kitchen on the long winter evenings when they huddled by their fire. For them she whistled all the droll bits of Marthy's songs that she remembered. Piqueur only listened solemnly, with his smothered briar pipe held politely in his hand; but Margot, buxom, and red cheeked with her iron gray hair tucked under her flaring cap would sit and gape and laugh and quite forget her knitting whenever she could hear,

"He who would woo a widow must not dally He must make hay while the sun doth shine He must not say 'Widow, be mine—be mine!—'"

Felicia's absurd whine for the timorous lover always made Bele snort from his corner,

"But boldly cry 'Widow, thou MUST—'"

Ah, the deep contralto of that boyish voice of hers roundly mouthing the pompous swain's wooing!

She could always make Margot cry when she "pretended" The Wreck of the Polly Ann—with her gray eyes wide with excitement as she described the rolling waves from the top of the rigging! I don't suppose she ever knew all of the words of any of these songs or ballads, she never did any of them quite the same any time, but she caught at the plot and she babbled a scrap or two of the chorus and she always knew every lilting turn of the tunes.

There was one "pretend" she could only do when she was alone. She did not try it often. Sometimes on the spring nights when the tender breezes let the half-awakened wistaria flutter outside her window, she would blow out all her candles and lean far across the sill and stare at her unfinished garden.

And when the house was still, oh, heart-breakingly still, she would kneel beside the bed and whisper,

"Let's pretend! Let's pretend we're back in your room, Maman! Let's pretend it's THAT NIGHT! Let's pretend they've just brought me in from the garden! And that you're laughing a little because you've heard him say,

"'Second cap I've lost here! Lost one when I was a little shaver! There was a girl—why, girl—!'

"Oh Maman! Maman! If you'd only been there! You wouldn't have brought me away!"

She kept the choir boy's black velvet cap in the lowest drawer of the wardrobe. Once Margot saw it when she was tidying things.

"I don't remember this—" she murmured curiously.

And Felicia had snatched it away jealously and cuddled it under her chin.

"Because that's mine!" she had retorted passionately, "It's mine! Mine! And it didn't belong evaire to any other woman only me!"

And the years slipped away like Time in Maitre Guedron's song and every year the garden grew a little lovelier and every year Felicia grew a little more sedate and every year Piqueur and the Major grew "too old." Until Piqueur no longer left his fireside and as for the Major—well, there came a day when the Major fell prostrate by the staircase and lay for a long time breathing very hard. That was a terrifying time until Bele brought a doctor from the village. He was a good little doctor, round faced and pink cheeked, quite the youngest thing, save Bele, that Felicia had seen in many years. And he pulled the Major back to something like life—a something that played chess very slowly and sometimes called Felicia Octavia and sometimes querulously murmured,

"Louisa, I forbid you to go to Paris—it's a bad business—"

She "pretended" nothing in these days, simply went gravely about the myriad tasks that awaited her, directing the stupid Bele, helping the white haired Margot, sitting proudly at the head of the table smiling across at a black eyed old gentleman who muttered and fumbled peevishly at his food or quite forgot to eat at all until she coaxed him. She always smiled at dinner; one should smile at dinner even though one feels very, very sad. And after dinner one must make an attempt to give a querulous old man his game of chess. And let his cold lips caress one's hand when Bele comes to put him to bed.

But after that, especially if it was spring, she would wander restlessly in her garden or pace back and forth in her high ceilinged bed chamber. And sometimes she would kneel beside her window and murmur a little prayer—she didn't know it was a prayer, it was just a scrap of something she remembered—

"'I can't get out—I can't get out!' cried the starling," which isn't in any prayer book of course, save the prayer book of a woman's imprisoned heart.

She was in the kitchen garden one morning just beside the gatehouse showing Bele for the thousandth time how to trench the peas without burying them, when a crumpled old man in a rough cap with a basket under his arm, limped through the gate.

"I want to see Major Trenton—" he said firmly.

Felicia turned. No one ever came to see the Major any more. Not even Certain Legal Matters since the time of the Major's fall. Felicia had signed many papers at his last visit some three years before and since then no one had bothered the Major.

"You'll have to see me," answered Felicia, coolly, "Bele, not—so— deep! You're smothering them—what is your business?"

The man took off his cap, he put down his basket and knelt to open it and out popped the littlest, drollest fluff of a spaniel that ever frisked.

"Oh, oh!" cried Felicia softly and dropped to her knees. "Oh, oh, it's a little Babiche! Oh Zeb! Zeb! To think I didn't see who you were—"

And they walked across the paved door-yard with the tears in their eyes and Felicia took him in to Margot and brought him soup and fed the wee doggie and fluttered about like a wild young thing instead of a sedate person of twenty-seven.

"I want to ask you a thousand million things! I want to ask Marthy a thousand million things—"

Zeb closed his eyes and shook his head.

Felicia patted his shoulder.

"Has she gone away, like Maman?" she asked softly. "I know how hard it is when folks go away, Zeb."

"But that's not the matter o' my comin'—" Zeb pushed his bowl away and stood respectfully, "That matter o' my comin' was as I must see the Major. On your going away, Miss Felicia, he promised me rent free for my lifetime and he gave me all the breedin' stock they was and left me the business for what I could make, so's to speak. Which isn't what it were, with new-fangled big dogs getting in style now. And with Marthy gone and all. But now with Mr. Burrel skipped out like he did, things is awful—just awful—and It seemed like I'd got to tell the Major—"

Margot pulled out a chair for Felicia.

"Sit down, Cherie," she murmured, "Margot will get it out—have you seen Mr. Burrel?" she questioned eagerly, "We've no sign of him this long time—"

"He's skipped out—" repeated Zeb dully, "Things is awful—Come last Thursday they pasted 'Auction, April 10 for Unpaid Taxes' over everything. So's when I was packing my things I come on some writing Miss Octavia left Marthy. As to how to get here, and I come."

He was weary and spent with his journey; he was stupider than ever, poor old Zeb. Not even the round faced doctor, whom Margot and Felicia called for advice, could learn anything more from his disconnected story, save that there were "heathen, dirty filthy heathen" living in the old house.

Felicia cuddled the new Babiche thoughtfully.

"Do you think," she asked, "that the Major would miss me, Doctor, if I went away a little while to find out about these things?"

The doctor shook his head.

"He wouldn't," he answered, "But, Miss Day, you couldn't go!"

She smiled.

"Couldn't I just!" she breathed. She was quite calm about the details. Her perfect poise awed both Margot and the doctor into thinking her quite capable. "Zeb could stay here with Margot, the doctor could take me to the station, Zeb says he didn't come on a boat, just a train. And you know, Margot, when I get to Brooklyn, I'll go right to Temple Bar. There was a man, as I told you, another lawyer. When I was young he told me to go to him if anything happened. Maman had him come. He will know what to do."

Nothing they could say would dissuade her. The touch of imperiousness with which she silenced their objections made the blundering well- meaning doctor want to shake her. He waited impatiently while Margot made Felicia ready for the hasty journey. He saw nothing absurd about the slender figure that came down the stairway toward him wrapped in the very same traveling coat in which she had first journeyed to the House in the Woods. She was wearing one of Louisa's ugliest bonnets with the strings tied primly under her chin and she was fearfully pale.

The Major was sitting by his fire, dozing gently. He did not notice her at all. He roused himself for the doctor's perfunctorily cheerful farewell. It was then that he noted Felicia's coat and bonnet.

"What are you pretending?" he asked.

"I'm pretending I'm going on a journey," she answered cheerfully. "Don't you think I look like going on a journey, Grandy?"

"I think you look very charming, my dear," he murmured automatically, his thin hand on the top of his cane. He shivered slightly. "But I forbid you to go to Paris—bad business—it's a bad business, Louisa!"

At the gateway, just as the doctor was clucking briskly to his horse, Felicia put out her hand and stopped him. Zeb and Margot and Bele stood respectfully beside the gatehouse, respectfully but very troubled.

"It's silly," faltered Felicia, "but I think—I—can't go alone—Zeb, you bring me my new Babiche, I can carry her under my arm."

Zeb handed the dog up proudly, patting her professionally. He scratched his head perplexedly as he stepped back from the wheel.

"Hey, wait!" he addressed the doctor as he started a second time. He fumbled in an inner pocket of his rough coat. "I was forgetting, Miss Felicia, a matter of a letter for you I found in Marthy's things—she sent it off at you this long time ago but it came back at her—"

He handed it up, thin, much creased and much bestamped and postmarked.

Miss F. Day New York. Or return to

M. Z. Smather 2 Montrose Lane, Brooklyn, N. Y.

Pretend you were the doctor if you like, the tired country doctor, mildly sorry for the little old maid granddaughter of your apoplectic patient—that queer patient who lives in that stone mansion some of those French refugees built over there across the Pine Plains. That's an easy enough thing to pretend, but a tiresome enough thing, too, for then you'll have to make believe you're urging your tired horse over those heavy roads to the railway station so you can get the old maid there in time for her train. She's quiet enough, in her seedy bonnet and shabby coat, a nice sensible body usually, only very self-willed. You know perfectly well she's going off on a wild goose chase and that she shouldn't be taking that fool puppy with her.

But oh, I hope you're good at pretending! For then you can pretend you're Felicia Day! Felicia Day sitting in a lumbering local train, quite unmindful of the atrocious rocking roadbed or the blurred spring forests that whirl past your smoke-glazed window; quite oblivious of all the terrors and discomforts of journeys past or journeys still to come!

For then you can pretend that you've just slowly pulled away the envelope that was so useless because of poor old Marthy's undecipherable handwriting and that you've kissed the inner wrapping that reads "Please send this to Miss Trenton (if that's her name). At once." And then—oh then, you can pretend you are reading the first letter you ever had in all this world and that it says,

Dear Felice:

You see I've found out your first name even if I'm not sure of the rest. Anyhow I know Major Trenton is your grandfather. He wouldn't let me see you this morning when I went to your house and this afternoon you'd gone away. The old woman says you've gone to a house in the woods. Please, please tell me you'll let me come to see you. Please tell me where it is. She doesn't seem to know exactly. The doctor says your foot will be all right but, oh, I can't forgive myself that I let you fall. I wish I had never, never let go of you at all—

Oh, girl, please write in a hurry where you are. I want to tell you so many things. I want to ask you a lot of things. You can send a letter to my house, it's 18 Columbia Heights, Brooklyn. I know you know my name because you called it when you were falling. It was so wonderful to have you know my name—

Oh, Felice, please write me very soon. I can't wait until I get your letter.

Your DUDLEY HAMILT.



CHAPTER III

LOST DREAMS

Perhaps you remember the fat boy who teased little Felice through the gate of the rectory yard. He didn't grow up like the rest of the choir boys, he merely expanded until he was a droll larger edition of his small tubby self; perhaps you've heard him singing at St. Patrick's and smiled at the bland and childlike face from which his beautiful big round baritone pours forth—he surely can sing! And eat! It's really rather fun to go to the Brevoort with him and watch his pleasingly plump wife remonstrate while he orders luncheon.

"Oh Tomothy Tom!" she groaned one showery April day, "those are all starchy, sweety, fatty things! Don't order another food! Or I'll want to eat them too, I shouldn't have another ounce, I shouldn't!"

"Not if you're going to take that jump over the fence in the second act," said Graemer who was lunching with them. He was her manager, Edwina Ely was a much better known person than her fat husband. And a good bit older, too, if you must know it, though of course she did not look so with her almost too blonde hair coiffed elaborately under the wicked wings of her impertinent toque and her pleasure-loving chin nestled in her white furs.

"I hate for us to eat here, the food's so good," she murmured with the same plaintive note that makes the audience weep at the end of the third act of "The Juggler."

"But I had a very special reason for wanting to come here," Graemer explained. He had to be a bit wary of the starchy things too, though he still had a figure in spite of his weight. He was complacently vain of his prematurely gray hair, his fresh youthful skin and his dark eyes. He reminded one somehow of a husky widow, he was so feminine in spite of his size. He looked leisurely enough for a busy man. You wondered how he had time to manage so many player folk, write so many plays and yet dawdle over his luncheon as he did. He leaned forward to ask Edwina's husband something. The fat man laughed uneasily.

"Well, he does usually lunch here," he admitted, "and I did use to know him rather well, but I'm not exactly the person to introduce you if you want anything from him—he's not overly fond of me—"

"I understood from Edwina that you were boyhood friends." The fat man smiled and deliberately and delicately chucked his wife under her rosy little chin.

"Tattle-tale!" he taunted her.

"You were!" she persisted, "you know you were!"

"If you ever were," said Graemer earnestly, "Permit me to suggest that you renew your youth. What I want him for is partly on Edwina's account. "The Juggler" isn't going as well as it ought to—I haven't anything new in sight for her and I'd like to keep this going until I have. What we need is a press agent like Dudley Hamilt."

"He's not a press agent—" gasped the fat man.

"He's the prince of press agents," answered Graemer easily, "he gets more publicity, favorable publicity, for anything he touches than any one I've ever watched work. Look what he did for the coal interests— and look at that work of his in last fall's campaign—"

"But that was politics—" protested the fat man. "He wouldn't call that being a press agent and I doubt if you could interest him in anything theatrical."

"I can if I can get at him. Some one's bound to if I don't. It isn't only for 'The Juggler' that I want him, it's for all my things—what I'm going to offer him is something big—about the biggest end of the game—but I don't want to seem to go to him so I thought that if there was some casual way—if you should ask him to lunch with us—"

"He probably wouldn't—of course he might—" the baritone ruminated, "Our fuss was a long time ago." He settled himself comfortably, he dearly loved to gossip. "He's a queer chap, Dud is. Always was. We used to sing in the same boy choir when we were kids. Little church over in Brooklyn. He was an angel terror, regulation boy sopran'. Into everything. Nearly drove the old choir master to drink. Was always being expelled. Our families both belonged to the church so Brownly always took us back after a row blew over. And carried us along while our voices were changing. When I first began doing baritone Dudley was singing all the tenor solos, had a peach of a voice, but he never did anything with it afterwards."

"After what?" asked Edwina irritably.

Her husband chuckled.

"Wait, I'm telling you. It's a long story and a funny one even if the joke is on me. You see Dud had a sweetheart on the other side of the rectory wall. He was everlastingly edging toward it, tossing things around to attract her attention and showing off generally. Funny little girl. I didn't think she looked like much when we used to see her first but gee, she certainly did come along when she got older! Grew into a young peach! Dud just hung around silently worshipping, pretending all the time he didn't know there was anybody picking posies in the garden. I didn't know that she'd so much as noticed him until one night in the spring when we were rehearsing for a special oratorio. Some night!" The fat man sighed reminiscently. "All to the Romeo and Juliet! Choir forming on the outside, old Brownly having a tempermental fit as usual and Dud and I stationed over by the wall ready to split our epiglottises; on our marks, set all ready to go when Dud tosses up his cap, just as he used to when he was a little shaver and Bing! Cap lands on top of the wall. So up clambers Dud—" the raconteur smiled, "and I hope I may never see anything so pretty pulled off as what happened next! That girl's head over the top of the gate! Big dreamy eyes shining in the moonlight, hair parted, big comb tucked in, lace dewdaddles around her shoulders! And Dud had been languishing about her since he was twelve! First and only love! In about one minute three seconds he had disappeared over said gate. It was no place for a fat boy. Besides old Brownly was fairly roaring from the chancel door, so I trotted along like a good child and left Dud to his philandering. Brownly nearly had apoplexy getting along without his pet tenor. After rehearsal I made a try for Dud, chirruped under that blooming wall for about half an hour until an old gentleman came out and requested me—er—more than requested me to go away.

"Old Major Trenton. Ever hear of him? Civil War hero. The fellow who raised all that rumpus about chaps taking pensions if they'd wits enough to earn their salt. He wouldn't touch one. Seems he'd gone to war after having a row with his wife, she'd lit out for Paris just before war was declared. Died over there leaving an infant daughter that he had his own troubles getting away from some of her mother's French relations. I used to hear my grandmother tell about the Trenton case by the hour. There was some kind of a queer will, something about the mother's money going to female descendants and a lot of talk about a bunch of property the dying wife had mysteriously acquired in France. The old Major only had one arm left after the war was over but he fought a duel with a chap who insinuated that his wandering wife wasn't all she might have been. By the time he'd got things settled he was the finest old grouch you'd meet in a lifetime. Had the recluse business down to a fine point. Summers he used to go off to the wilds of Canada or the Adirondacks or somewhere that his wife's will had specified their daughter must live and winters he used to lock the girl up in that mansion next to our church. Wouldn't touch a penny of his daughter's funds, actually paid rent to her, my grandmother said. Made his living raising dogs, lap-dogs, in an old stable back of the church. They were all the style. The fair customers used to hope always that they were going to see the fascinating recluse widower. But they never did. The only time he ever came to the surface that the public knew about was the morning after the daughter eloped with the rector's son. Grandmother says the Major smashed up a couple of reporters the Hawk sent over to interview him but he did tell 'em what he thought on the woman question. Nobody had the nerve to go near him for quite a while. Not for a couple of years or so. And then somebody found the daughter starving in an attic. The rector's son had been a nice enough chap but he hadn't enough grit to earn his living and the girl, though she wasn't so young, couldn't touch her property without the Major's consent and as she was as stiff-necked as he, she hadn't made any effort at getting that consent. The rector's son had died of pneumonia and their baby was just recovering from it and the girl herself never did get over the strain. Somebody carried her home to die, which it seems she took some years doing. Dud's sweetheart the other side of the rectory wall was her daughter. The Major had lost a wife and a daughter and he evidently had made up his mind he wasn't going to let the last generation slip away. So you can just about guess how popular Dudley Hamilt was when he broke into the Major's back yard.

"The old soldier didn't take a chance. He abso-bally-lutely disappeared the next day. Took the girl with him, of course. Dud went around like a wild man. He was twenty-one that spring, tall as he is now and had about seven times as much pep as he has now, if you can imagine that much. Evangeline looking for Gabriel was a paper chase compared to Dudley trying to find his lady-love. He spent months at it. Got haggard and wan, had a couple of fights with Burrel, a lawyer who was the only person who knew where Major Trenton had gone. Funny thing, it was that same Burrel who absconded with the American Trust Company's stuff two or three years ago. Trenton must certainly have made it worth the lawyer's while not to tell—for that lawyer was as crooked as a corkscrew and yet Dud couldn't bribe him with everything he could muster—which was quite some, for in those days the Hamilt family had scads of money.

"I made a sort of break one night—" The fat man felt of his neck ruefully. "Tried to joke with Dud a little, it was a year or so afterward and I thought he'd gotten over things—but—er—he hadn't. He—" He paused and blushed. "That's he though, coming through the door," he ended. "Want me to try for him?"

It was the fair Edwina who dared however. She lifted her head charmingly and beckoned.

"Don't ball things up, Tommy," she murmured under her breath, "Leave it to us—get out if you see he's still miffed with you—Please come over here, Mr. Hamilt," she called softly. "I want you to meet Mr. Graemer."

He looked as blonde as she, almost, ruddy, lithe, but somehow old. He did not smile at her greeting, he merely nodded. She gestured again, so imperiously that he obeyed, but with scant courtesy, and he did not look at all overjoyed at meeting the illustrious Mr. Graemer. He sat down however, ordered his luncheon and listened gravely enough to Edwina's chatter.

"Have you seen me in 'The Juggler'? Aren't you willing to say I can act now? He never would—" she turned to Graemer. "He always said I couldn't—but, don't you think I do in 'The Juggler'?" she entreated Hamilt.

"It's an actress-proof part, isn't it?" he bantered, watching her lazily.

"Brute!" she pouted.

"Perhaps he is complimenting me," teased Graemer.

"Not at all," promptly answered the rude Mr. Hamilt. "You've all but ruined the play with your everlasting managing. It's a peach up to the last act. Until you chuck that maudlin bunch of slush and scenery at us. Where did you get that play, anyhow?" he asked insolently.

"Why, he wrote it last summer," protested Edwina.

"Yes?" his uplifted eyebrows were insulting as he glanced quizzically at Graemer. "Then he was about twenty-five years younger last summer than he is now. The first two acts of that play—Gad, it got me up till then, but the rest of it—" he broke a bit off a crusty roll and buttered it carefully, "I can readily believe, Mr. Graemer," he added deliberately, "that you did write the rest of the play."

"You have to give the public what it wants," suggested Graemer blandly.

"No, you don't," said Dudley Hamilt. "You have to make the public want what it's going to get—or what it needs."

"Which is exactly what I wanted to see you about," drawled the manager significantly.

Hamilt shrugged.

"If I ever did get into the theatrical game," he answered rather more good-humoredly than he had yet spoken, "I wouldn't insult the public by a perpetual bluff that they were getting something new. I wouldn't keep handing out things that assumed the public all had salacious minds or else no minds at all. I don't mean that I'd go in for uplift stuff—that isn't what the theater is for—it's to amuse—to thrill— to wake up our emotions—it's to play—But as you chaps who control the thing have it going now it's so damnably mechanical there's no sense of play left in it. Why don't you find something that admits the audience has an imagination?"

"As for instance?" Graemer put in adroitly.

"I don't know—" Hamilt sighed, "I haven't the least idea what. Only it ought to be something that everybody is unconsciously hankering for—something that we miss all the while—something we lack in this machine-age. Something that will come across the footlights by itself instead of having to have the spotlight show it to us, something that would make us feel the way we did when we were kids—I guess it's romance—and perhaps the spirit of it is gone—"

Graemer smiled. He nodded to Edwina. Then he drew a long breath and put his case bluntly.

"I came in here rather deliberately, Mr. Hamilt, because I've been wanting to have a talk with you for a long time. It isn't only about 'The Juggler' that I wanted to talk with you but about all of my productions. There are so many of them and I am so busy with them that there are a lot of angles of the game that I do not have time to touch. The thing I need is what you have aptly described—some one who will make the public want what it's going to get. Some one who will make it think it's going to get what it wants. The kind of thing you did last fall in politics—making the whole thing seem something any regular fellow must find out about and something he'd have a lot of fun finding out. It's struck me all the while you were pulling your strings that that sort of work about the stage would wake up the theater-goer the same way you waked up the voter."

"It might," agreed Mr. Hamilt cautiously. "There might be ways—if you had something to back your statements that the game was worth while—I mean to the theater-goer—"

"Well, wouldn't you be willing to think it over and have another talk with me? I don't mean immediately and I do mean on a big scale. I'm sure you understand that—"

Hamilt motioned for the waiter, coolly insisted on paying his own check and rose.

"What you suggest is rather interesting," was all the answer he vouchsafed, "I might."

But after he'd gone Graemer looked after him and laughed.

"Middle name is Cynic—but he's pretty young yet."

"And the best looking thing," sighed Edwina pulling on her gloves, bored with her long silence.

Graemer was thoughtful.

"He's given me an idea," he announced suddenly. "Or perhaps it was Tom's gossip about him. How'd you like to do an ingenue part like that missing lady affair—start with your head over a garden wall—call it 'The Heart of a Boy,' say—fill it up with this stuff Hamilt calls youth—"

Tommie absorbed his last pastry.

"I've just remembered the girl's name," he announced, wiping a crumb from his moist lips. "It was Felicia something or other—sort of sad, wasn't it?"

"Maybe it would have been sadder if she'd married him," suggested Edwina ironically. "He is a grouch, you can't get around that."

And the grouch, striding briskly up the avenue, was trying to be fair.

"Poor old Tommie!" he thought ruefully, "I don't know why I should go on hating him because he will blab—it's the nature o' the beast—that stupid little much-divorced animal that married him—" he glared at two innocent young shoppers who were passing, "Gad, women are such sophisticated cows nowadays—" Spring always made him wretched, spring always made him fretful, spring always sent him off for the woods somewhere, any woods so long as it was woods. He pondered over whether he could get away Friday or would have to wait till Saturday morning, and eventually decided on Saturday, consulting a memorandum book scowlingly as he did so, jotting down appointments. He noted that he would have to be in his office at five o'clock on Friday. Somebody or other was going to telephone him about something. Which made him reflect irritably that of all the mechanical devices of a mechanical age the thing he hated most of all was a telephone! He could scarcely endure the stupid way everybody shrieked "Hello!" through it. He wished morosely that he could take a week-end trip without any luggage whatever because he always had a row about his luggage. He wished there was some system whereby one needn't always lose half one's luggage.

Felicia could have told him! Infrequent traveler that she was she had been properly educated on that point. However much she may have yawned, at the tender age of ten, over a certain dissertation on the etiquette of travel, given one summer afternoon by Mademoiselle D'Ormy, Felicia aged twenty-seven, embarked upon her first journey alone, found herself musing with mighty comfort upon the charming definiteness of those never-to-be-forgotten axioms. For Mademoiselle had made the small Felicia recite them over and over until she was letter perfect.

"On a journey the traveler should enumerate all the traveling equipment in fives to avoid the confusion caused by losing one's belongings. Count upon the fingers what one has possessed upon starting."

All unconscious of the amused glances of her fellow passengers, Felicia Day, in her absurd bonnet and antiquated traveling coat sat primly in the Pullman section that the doctor's thoughtfulness had provided for her and counted her "five" just before her train reached New York. She smiled as she counted, a whimsical smile—

Item one. A letter! A beautiful letter, reposing next her heart under the stiff bodice of a frock that had once belonged to Josepha, mother- in-law of Major Trenton.

Item two. One fluffy, sleepy Blenheim spaniel hidden in the capacious sleeve of a coat that had been Octavia's.

Item three. A long and narrow knitted reticule, once carried by Louisa, wife of Major Trenton, now containing bills and coins placed there by Margot, said reticule held firmly, as Margot had directed, with the center twisted firmly around Felicia's left wrist.

Item four. One russet leather traveling bag once used by Major Trenton, now containing modest rolls of ancient lingerie, Octavia's massive silver brushes and combs, a faded India dressing-gown belonging to whom even Margot couldn't remember, on top of which was tucked a flat wicker basket containing small cakes and sandwiches wrapped neatly in a napkin and weighted over all these contents, where Felicia herself had placed it when Margot wasn't looking—THE THEORY AND PRACTISE OF GARDENING!

"Perhaps the wistaria will have to be pruned—perhaps the ivy around the fountain will need trimming—maybe the narcissi will need thinning out when they're through blossoming—I'm stupid about narcissi. I've been living so long where there weren't any—" Her thoughts had raced longingly toward the back yard of her childhood while Margot had been packing the bag.

Item five. "Myself," decided Felicia nodding, "I must be careful not to lose myself."

Which, droll as it seemed when she enumerated, proved to be the most difficult item to remember.

"Likewise on a journey especially of a business nature, one should keep clearly in mind the exact order of destination, choosing the most urgent first."

Destination first. "Temple Bar" where one may find the Portia Person who long ago promised to help should one ever be "in Trouble."

Destination second. The address at the bottom of a grimy handbill that announced "To be sold at auction for unpaid taxes—By the order of J. K. Harlow, Justice of the—"

Destination really! Eighteen Columbia Heights!

"First," Felicia at least began her thinking clearly, "I shall go to see the Judge and I shall say 'Don't sell Grandy's house because Certain Legal Matters hasn't attended to things. Just wait. I know another lawyer, he's in Temple Bar. He will attend to everything.' Oh no! First I'll go find the Portia Person and while he is attending to everything I will send a letter to Dudley Hamilt's house—then I will go to Grandy's house and wait for Dudley Hamilt to come—oh! oh! Babiche—I can't arrange things clearly in mind, I can't no matter how I try! Only I must—"

So over and over to the roar of the train she tried to drill herself.

"First the Portia Person—then the Judge—"

It was nine o'clock in the morning when, tired and bewildered, she emerged from the subway at Borough Hall, Brooklyn. The little hand, that "had never spread itself over a doorknob or a fire-iron or any clumsy thing" struggled valiantly with the russet bag; the new Babiche, cramped and shaken from her day and night of travel, poked her snubby nose from under the traveling coat and sniffed and squeakingly yawned. Louisa's bonnet had worked itself askew, the sharp wind from the river was flapping the heavy clothing about her slender ankles and displaying the outlandish old "Congress gaiter" shoes. A distressed and ridiculous figure, she stood and shuddered at the roar of the elevated above her and the jangle of the surface cars that clattered past her and trembled at the disconcerting honk of the motors that barely escaped crushing her.

Officer Brennan, pompously regulating the congested traffic watched the grotesque person on the curbstone and chuckled.

"For the love of hivin," he thought, "Thim movie actors will dress like annything for the money—" and glanced about automatically to see the camera man. But something in the terror of the little woman's glance flashed over the crowded crossing to his warm Irish heart, "Hullo, she's no acterine!" He ploughed through the river of travel and caught at her arm and felt her slight weight sag against him. "Annybody as turned her loose—" he continued his soliloquy after he'd jollied a newsboy into escorting her across to the Temple Bar Building, "Ought to be sent up—" He vented his disgust at the "annybody" on a daring chauffeur and watched until the newsboy came panting back to his stand to nod a triumphant grinning affirmative "'Nd her head up in the air like a queen—" he held his own head regally to signal the cross-town traffic, "Queer lot!" and forgot her.

It was noon when she came back to him, looking older and queerer and whiter faced than ever. Temple Bar is a large office building and Felicia Day had tramped courageously from floor to floor, from office to office, persistently seeking the Portia Person. She had been laughed at, had been almost insulted, had been treated with deference and treated with indifference; she had talked with scores and scores of lawyers, looking searchingly into their faces, asking her question firmly and sweetly. She had asked it of busy lawyers, lazy lawyers, suave lawyers, thin lawyers, fat lawyers, rude lawyers, young lawyers, old lawyers; she had talked to dozens of clerks and stenographers, appealed to elevator men, janitors, scrub women, any one who would listen—she wanted to find the Portia Person, he had curly hair and he was quite tall and he had had a client whose name was Octavia, who was pretty and ill and who had given him some papers sixteen years ago. He had talked with Mademoiselle D'Ormy, in a house in Montrose Place. Of this business that she had for him the little woman was extraordinarily canny, it was no one's affair save hers and the Portia Person's.

The patient girl at the news stand in the main hallway looked up and down a list of tenants, checking them off with an over-manicured finger as she tried to suggest. She had taken charge of Felicia's bag, had offered to keep Babiche. Her good humor shone in a dreary morning. Felicia began to have faith in her.

"If I was you," said the girl, "I'd go get myself a bite to eat. It's noon, everybody's going out—don't you see?"

Felicia saw, she saw also that the patient newsstand girl was tired.

"Do you go to get yourself 'a bite'?" she asked curiously.

"Not till two o'clock," sighed the girl.

"I wish," decided Felicia whimsically, "that Margot had cooked de-licious foods for us—broiled chicken and baked potatoes and a caramel custard and that we could go and sit by the Bowling Green and have Bele bring our lunch out on the little folding table—for you have been most kind to me—"

The girl stared after her in amazement.

"Well, I'll be darned!" she announced frankly to the elevator starter, "that woman is the limit! She's certainly got me guessing! One minute she seems as intelligent as anybody—only she can't remember the name of the man she's looking for—but gee, I forget names myself—and the next minute she's asking me to lunch on Bowling Green, as pleasant as you please! Can you beat it? And I can't for the life of me make out whether she's young or old—her voice's dandy and young. Honest, I like to hear her talk, she talks so comical—but don't she look like the last rose of summer, now don't she?"

The elevator starter agreed that she did and whistled "She May Have Seen Better Days" till the news-stand girl giggled and told him he was "Too comical" but they both of them commented about her when she did not return.

"She may be a nut," admitted the girl, "But she's kinda got me going. Gee I'd like to find the lawyer for her just to find out was she Dorothy Arnold come back—or somebody like that."

It was Officer Brennan who had dissuaded her from her attempt to find the Portia Person. He had spied her, standing undecided outside the office building and hailed her as he was about to go off his beat.

"Did you find what you were looking for?"

His sureness of manner and his uniform impressed her.

"I couldn't find the man I wanted," she confided, "so I think I'll just have to see the Judge Person, myself, wouldn't you?"

He cogitated. Did she know what judge she wanted to see?

She unfolded the grimy hand bill, the "To be sold for unpaid taxes" that Zeb had brought to her. He read it slowly till he came to the "Order of Justice Harlow" at the bottom.

"That's an easy one," he cheered her, "I'll take you over there right now and put you next to a fellow who works there. He'll slip you through to his Honor himself and you can tell him your troubles."

But in spite of being "slipped through" there was a deal of waiting, sometimes in anterooms, sometimes in corridors, a deal of answering the questions of not overly intelligent clerks, and late afternoon found her sitting primly cuddling her restless doggie, waiting for some one to bring the tax records. She was a little tireder, a little hungrier, a little less sure of herself than when the friendly news girl had advised her to "get a bite." She was keeping her courage high by thinking over and over to herself,

"After I see the Judge then I'll go to Dudley Hamilt."

It had not occurred to her that this busy place was a court room. It had no stately panelled walls like those that had been painted in the background of the portrait of Grandy's father. Nor did she understand when she was at last ushered into the Justice's presence that he was the man she had been waiting to see.

He did not wear a white curly wig and he did not wear a black satin gown the way Grandy's father had. Nor were there any scrolls of vellum with fat beribboned seals in this Judge's hands. Instead, alert slender fingers riffled their way rapidly through a mass of papers that a clerk put before him. Felicia watched the fingers until the close cropped head was lifted and keen gray eyes glanced straight through hers.

The abrupt phrase with which he had intended to dismiss her died. He stared at her curiously. He noted the traveling bag at her feet, the absurd old coat and bonnet, the dark circles under her beseeching eyes—

"She looked," as he explained afterward, "like a daguerreotype—old and youthful all at once, faded yet shining—most extraordinary little person—"

"You are the Felicia Day mentioned here?" he asked gravely tapping the papers.

Felicia tried to smile. She managed it so far as her eyes were concerned but her lips were too tired. She nodded.

"And have you any other lawyer than Mr. Burrel—the lawyer who has disappeared?"

She nodded again. She spoke to him for the first time, her low contralto, her clear enunciation, her perfect poise of manner, startled him even more than the childlike simplicity—almost absurdity—of her words.

"There's the Portia Person in Temple Bar."

"A woman lawyer?" he was very patient with her.

"No, he's a man. I only thought he was a woman when I was little. I can't quite think of his name but he is in Temple Bar and he came to see Maman and he told me if there was trouble to come to him—I've looked and looked, but I can't find him today."

"I see—" the Justice looked out of the window thoughtfully, "but in the meantime, while you're finding him, don't you think you'd better have some other lawyer? Is there some other one you know about?"

"Maman only had that one."

It was going to be harder than he thought to make her understand. But somehow or other he did it, talking slowly and very gently as though he were talking to a child.

"I'm sorrier than I can tell that you are having this trouble. This house in Montrose Place, Miss Day, has been your own property since you were eighteen years of age. It was formerly the property of your mother—" he consulted the papers, "Octavia Trenton Day. This Mr. Burrel who had charge of your property has paid neither the taxes on it, nor the interest on some mortgages that he arranged on it, for about seven years back. Can you understand that? And the house has been rented in the meantime to a great many families, it is technically a tenement house. The present trouble is not only about these unpaid taxes and the unpaid interest, but you have violated the Tenement House laws. You have not installed proper fire escapes or plumbing, you have not answered any of the notices that have been sent you. This court had to fix an arbitrary fine—which you have not paid."

"I nevaire do pay things," answered Felicia, greatly bewildered, "you see Mademoiselle D'Ormy did not teach me much about money and Margot only knows a little about money. Grandy paid for things until he fell and now Margot pays for them. But you see Margot gets our money from Mr. Burrel, he has all of our money so I just think—" she ended with a businesslike decision, "you will have to get all that money for the taxes and other things that I owe from the money that he has."

"But that is what I have been trying to explain. This Mr. Burrel has been missing for over three years. This Margot you speak of must have had some other way of getting funds for you."

"Margot hasn't vairee much," Felicia told him, "I can't ask her for anything more. I think Mr. Judge, you'll just have to take my house."

He answered this seemingly absurd suggestion with deliberation.

"These papers show," he explained, "that Mr. Burrel offered your equity in the house to the holder of the mortgage some six months or so before Burrel himself disappeared. But the value of the property in Montrose Place has depreciated to such an extent and the unpaid taxes have piled up so alarmingly that the mortgager refused to agree to that. The only way I can see just now to help you at all is to arrange for a stay of thirty days in this matter of the proceedings against you for the violation of the Tenement House Law together with a thirty day Injunction preventing the sale of the house for unpaid taxes. That will give you thirty days to arrange to pay that fine—which I have made as light as possible but which amounts to fifty dollars." "And the rest of it?" asked Felicia coolly.

He consulted the papers.

"Is eighteen thousand eight hundred and forty-two dollars and seventy- eight cents."

She pulled open the strings of Louisa's beaded purse, she let the money and bills therein slide into a heap on the desk between them. She frowned at it.

"That's all there is now," she remarked, almost cheerfully, "except some that Margot had to keep for buying sugar and flour and things in the village—" She was so calm that he knew she was utterly unaware of the enormity of the amount. "If I am going to have thirty days more," she concluded, "I'm quite sure I can get the rest for you, I'll find the Portia Person, I know, evaire so many lawyers weren't in Temple Bar today. He might be there tomorrow, you know." She nodded confidently. "But that's all I can give you now. You've been vairee good to try to make me understand. I'm rather stupid about it because Mademoiselle did not teach me those things. And Maman arranged for the Portia Person to attend to it." She rose, she cuddled her dog under her arm and stooped for her bag.

He gestured for her to put the bag down, he scooped her small pile of bills and silver into his hand and reached for her reticule and tucked the money in slowly.

"My dear Miss Day," he stammered, "if you do not find this—er— lawyer, you mention, a lawyer will be assigned by the court to attend to things, and you would have to make your payments through him. In the meantime—" he put the purse in her hand. "I am more sorry than I can tell you that I have had to fix this fine—it is purely arbitrary —I am very sorry—"

"Of course you would be," said Felicia slowly, her clear eyes looking at him without malice and without scorn. "You must be sorry a great deal of the time, aren't you? You couldn't be really happy making so many people unhappy as I've watched go to talk with you today—they looked vairee unhappy."

The gentle unfairness of her rebuke was most disconcerting.

"Perhaps I make some of them happy," he protested.

She shook her head.

"I didn't see a happy one," she answered simply.

An odd feeling that he wanted her to think well of him worried him. Why he should have cared what this bedraggled, bankrupt little creature thought he did not fathom, perhaps it was just that she looked so helpless and so old that his heart smote him. Awkward as a boy he stared out through the bedrizzled windowpane into the spring rain.

"I hope you won't think I'm impertinent," he suggested suddenly, "but I believe you said you arrived from out of town this morning and came directly here. Have you some friend to whom you are going?"

From beneath Louisa's ridiculous old bonnet her hair scraggled untidily, her pallor accentuated the dark circles under her drooping eyelids. Yet when she looked up at him, the glory in those tired eyes surprised him.

"I'm going,"—oh, how she wanted to say "to Dudley Hamilt"! It took all her reserve to finish her sentence calmly! "To eighteen Columbia Heights."

"That's not far," he felt an inexpressible relief that she had somewhere to go, "I'm not quite ready to go home myself, but my car is waiting for me. Suppose we have one of these boys take your bag down for you and that you let my chauffeur drive you to Columbia Heights while he is waiting for me—I should be very glad if you would—"

She did not answer him until he opened the door for her. When she looked up at him he was fairly startled by her wide ingenuous smile.

"I was just pretending," she said clearly, "that I had my ox-cart so that I wouldn't have to walk to find Columbia Heights—I was just thinking how delightful it would be if I did for I'm afraid—as afraid as Margot is of a bat—of all of the things in the street—you are indeed kind—" ah, the stilted phrases with which Mademoiselle had instructed her so many years ago!—"to suggest a drive for me—"

He went back to his papers positively chuckling.

"She's refreshingly different," he thought. "Refreshingly different." But he sighed as he handed the papers to the clerk. The whole case seemed a hopeless tangle. And now that she was gone Felicia herself seemed absolutely unreal. He rubbed his eyes and plunged into the next thing.

But Felicia, resting comfortably on the wide seat of the judge's car shut her tired eyes and let her head sink against the cushions. Her heart was racing faster than this swiftly moving motor, she felt as though she could not breathe.

They came to a slow halt before a pile of bricks and mortar. Above them loomed a huge unfinished apartment house, from which were tramping forth the home-going laborers. The smell of the wet lime as they tracked across the rather narrow street was over-powering. The chauffeur opened the door and spoke to her respectfully.

"There must be some mistake in your address, Madam, this is eighteen Columbia Heights." She was overwhelmed, she could think nothing whatever to say to him. He came to the rescue himself with a quiet, "Perhaps if you have the name of the person you wanted to see—"

"It's Dudley Hamilt."

There was a drug store on the opposite corner. He disappeared within its door and it was several minutes before he came back. This time he had a definite word.

"The druggist says that the Hamilt house stood where this apartment is being built, Madam. He says he understands that the elder Mr. Hamilt is dead but that the younger one has an office somewhere in Manhattan. Perhaps you could speak with him on the telephone—"

Speak with him! Her face glowed with sudden color.

"How nice of you!" she rose obediently to follow him, putting Babiche carefully on the cushioned seat. "Will you tell the druggist that I'd like to?"

The man helped her respectfully through the doorway, he was thinking as had his employer and as Officer Brennan had, that this odd little woman shouldn't have to go around alone, and yet, it was puzzling, she didn't seem to mind doing it. He obligingly found the telephone number, turned and asked her if she would like him to call Mr. Hamilt's office for her. The telephone was screwed to a small table near the door. Felicia waited, her heart throbbing. Beside her at the marble counter two giggling young things ordered soda water from a white-coated clerk. They were garbed in the triggest and gayest of spring clothing, they were as impeccably immaculate as the smiling ladies on the perfume bottles in the window. Back of the telephone was a long mirror that reflected their pretty smartness and Felicia's impossible dowdiness. But Felicia did not see anything at all save the round black hole through which she was to speak to Dudley Hamilt. She was awed by it as she had been surprised by everything in this amazing day. She watched closely the way the man held the receiver; not for worlds would she have admitted her ignorance. She took the receiver, she sat down quietly, she drew a long breath. The chauffeur was already disappearing through the door, the drug clerk was joking with his giggling young patrons. Suddenly her rapturous ear caught Dudley Hamilt's resonant voice speaking,

"Who is it?" he demanded impatiently.

Her low sweet laughter purred over the wires to him.

"Can't you remember?" she asked quietly. "I am Felice.—Yes, I am Felice. I have been trying to find your house, Dudley Hamilt, but it's gone, they are building a vairee big house there. I didn't have your letter, that letter that you sent me. Not till Zeb brought it to me day before yesterday. That was why I didn't write to you where I was."

"Where are you now?" the excitement in his voice frightened her. "Tell me, where are you?"

The giggling back of her grew so insistent that it broke in upon even the solitude of her wonderous moment. She raised her eyes to the mirror before her. She caught a swift glimpse of laughing faces, the impishness of their mischievous eyes made her shiver. She instinctively glanced into the looking glass to see where their gaze rested. And looked straight at—herself!

At Louisa's ugly bonnet, at the damp and shapeless shoulders of the gray coat, at her own pallor, at the deep shadows under her tired eyes, into her own eyes, and saw the whole drab mirrored ghost of the woman who had been the young Felicia. And through the telephone rang Dudley Hamilt's eager voice, as eager as it had been that night when he clambered over the gate.

"Tell me quickly where you are—I must see you—oh, your voice sounds as though I'd not lost you at all—" he laughed nervously like an embarrassed boy, "I want to see you—" he repeated inadequately.

She thought quickly, she could think of only one thing and that was that Dudley Hamilt must NOT see her.

"Let's pretend," she interrupted him, her low contralto voice trembling, "Let's pretend that I'm somewhere you can't see me—I only wanted—to tell you that I had your letter. I wanted you to know how happy it made me to have it. Dudley Hamilt—"

The receiver dropped from her hand; somewhere back of her the giggling grew fainter and farther away. She shook her head weakly when the drug clerk hurried with a glass of water. She was swaying, dimly conscious of the awe in the face of the girl who was hastening toward her.

"Oh, she looks awfully ill—" she heard a dismayed voice.

"I'm not ill—" her proud chin lifted. She was pulling herself together again, she even managed to stand by holding one hand on the edge of the table.

The whirling blackness of the moment had passed. Even while the clerk was hastily calling back the judge's chauffeur, the drooping little figure had straightened itself.

"I think the lady was kinda faint," mumbled the clerk, mechanically replacing the dangling receiver. "She's O.K. now—ain't you?"

"Did you find where you wanted to go?" the man's respectful query helped her.

"If it's not too far," she answered with dignity, "I think I'd like to go to my own house—it's in a street called Montrose Place."

Inside the car her head drooped, she felt the new Babiche licking her lifeless hand, she felt the whir of the motor. It vibrated through every jangling nerve of her weary body. The whole impossible journey was like a nightmare.

"That wasn't I, I saw in there—" her thoughts blurred, "it's just a dreadful dream—that wasn't Felice I saw—oh, Dudley Hamilt—I was so pretty that night! And now I'm just old—like Grandy—like Piqueur—" After a million years—or was it after one little minute?—the car stopped easily. Like the dream that Felicia had hoped the whole dreadful day had been. She opened her eyes as though she might have been waking up in the bed that Poquelin, the father of Moliere, had carved.

"This," said the judge's chauffeur dubiously, "is Montrose Place."

She got out slowly, tucking Babiche mechanically under her arm. The man lifted out her bag and touched his cap,—she did not even see him go.

The huge willows still arched above Montrose Place, but they were shabby and dying. And the mossy bricked sidewalk was gone but on its muddy concrete successor, scores and scores of noisy, dirty, alien children squabbled and cried. Some of them were pushing against this strange woman who had descended from the motor, some of them fingered her coat, one bolder than the rest sat down upon her bag. It seemed to her as though more children than she had known there were in the whole world were crowding against her. Wherever she looked there were children. They hung from the once lovely old windows, they slid down the once beautiful balustrade, they tumbled out of every doorway. And wherever there were not children there were signs. Blatant, dingy signs. The first one she glimpsed was propped before the basement gate through which the housemaids had been wont to enter. It was shaped like a tombstone and with amateur lettering announced:

"TONY HE SELLA COAL WOOD ICE"

And from the rusty iron balcony hung a ragged pair of trousers into which had been inserted a board, the legs flapped dispiritedly in the gusty wind from the river. Painted in scraggling white paint across the seat of the trousers was written

"A. Cohen. Pressing 25 and 50 cents."

It was twilight. The tailor had lighted a single flickering gas jet beside the basement window. In the old days the front basement had been the housemaids' sitting room with a channel-coal fire glowing in the grate and a tidy white cloth on the table and neat rows of geraniums in the windows—a cheery sort of place. Not at all like this stuffy, overcrowded, ill ventilated place with the two silent shirt- sleeved men humped over steaming ironing boards and with a dozen more clattering away at noisy sewing machines.

A grizzled man scowled at her through thick glasses.

"Vell," he rasped, "Vat do you vant, madam?"

"I want to stay here."

"You vant to rent a room? I calls mine missus—" he called stridently, "I think she gotta room for three dollars, I don' know—"

From the doorway of the once shining and immaculate kitchen a frowsy head protruded, "Four we should get," whined a nasal voice "it is only that it is on the top floor that we can make it so cheap—"

"This," announced Felicia to the slatternly woman "—is my house. How dare you let it get so dirty!"

Her rising anger swept into her heart like a reviving fire. She thought of Zeb, mouthing his scorn of the "dirty filthy heathen," she thought of Mademoiselle D'Ormy scolding a housemaid who left so much as a speck of dust on the hall balustrades, she did not see the grinning woman gesturing to her husband, touching her forehead to indicate Felicia's lack of wits.

"That ain't my business," the woman shrugged when she saw Felicia looking at her. "We pays out rent by a receiver since the Mister Burrel goes avay—I gotta get mine renta in adwance. I gotta nice room if you vant to stay."

"But it's my house, of course I'll stay."

"It's a nice room, three dollars a veek—you vant to see it?"

The color blazed in Felicia's cheeks.

"I should like you to take me to it at once," she announced with dignity. "You'll carry my bag, please."

The tailor's wife grumbingly obeyed her, preceding her new lodger with ill concealed temper, her lumpy person almost blocking the ample stairway.

Up they passed from the basement to the once stately hallway. Not even the encrusted dirt could hide the beauty of the old tessellated marble floors and arched doorways but where the oval topped doors had once swung hospitably wide their gloomy panels now hid the drawing-rooms, and where the long mirror had once made the hallway bright with reflected light a dingy ill-painted wall made the passage so gloomy that one could scarcely see above the first landing. Silently Felicia's weary feet carried her along behind her untidy conductor. Unconsciously she tiptoed as she passed the closed door of her mother's room, tiptoed as gently as though that frail sufferer were still lying listlessly on the "sleighback" bed. Quietly around the bend of the upper hall she followed, past the upstairs sitting room and up the second flight toward the sleeping chambers, her heart beating from the unwonted climb, her breath coming in quick gasps and her damp hair clinging to her aching forehead.

"Maybe," she exulted secretly, "it will be the nursery that I'll have —maybe I left something—" she smiled as she caught herself thinking it on the stairway—"perhaps there will be a little fire in the Peggoty grate and I can shut the door and sit down and think clearly."

But it wasn't the nursery. As they passed its closed door she could hear the wrangle of many voices, a baby's fretful cry and the hurrying whir of other sewing machines. The frowsy woman opened the door at the head of the stairs. The-three-dollar-a-week-room was the hall bedroom. The small room where Mademoiselle D'Ormy's bed had been wont to stand in the old days—with the door left ajar so that Felicia would not be frightened when she awoke in the night.

With the door to the adjoining room closed it looked twice as narrow as she remembered it. And it was not a nice clean room. It held an old iron bed and a pine table and a cheap wicker rocking chair. Yet Felicia could almost have kissed the dingy walls for they were covered with exactly the same droll paper that had always decorated them—the paper on which the oft repeated group of fat faced shepherdesses danced about their innumerable May poles and alternating with these perpetual merry makers were the methodical flocks of lambs. Spang over the middle of the space back of the bed was the discolored spot where she had thrown the large and dripping bath sponge.

She felt suddenly very small and very, very helpless—she was utterly spent. But there was something in her wide gray eyes—a dignity and a command—that completely dominated the shrewish wife of the hump- shouldered tailor, something that made the slatternly creature back out of the room, for Felicia Day, with her hand on the battered iron railing of the bed, had said clearly, "Woman, go at once."

And when the door was shut she sat down in one chair and put Babiche carefully on the bed. She untied Louisa's bonnet and dropped it to the floor; she loosed the cumbersome traveling coat. Far out on the river the ferry boats and tugs were signaling; across the water the glamour of a million lights shone toward her. It was quite dark now; she stumbled to the window and looked down into the back yard. The dusk had mercifully blurred out for her the heaps of refuse and ashes that were dumped upon the spot where the narcissus border had been. The great iron pots on the top of the garden wall loomed out of the shadows. She looked straight down on the gate to the rectory yard.

She sunk in a crumpled heap and rested her weary head on the window sill, then groped for the wee doggie as she heard the faint click of its tiny paws coming toward her over the bare floor.

"Oh, Babiche!" she whispered, "Babiche, how happy—we should be—to be home!"



CHAPTER IV

THE UNFINISHED SONG

You can't imagine anything more amusing than the satisfaction with which Felicia Day awoke. The early sun was streaming in her eyes. She rubbed them drowsily and sat up in the middle of the narrow humpy bed. At the foot of the bed Babiche awoke too, yawning and stretching beautifully, reflexing her droll puppy body and wagging her wee feathery tail.

On the floor the russet bag gaped open where Felicia had dumped it the night before; her clothes lay in a limp heap beside the window. But the clear spring air, deliciously salty smelling to the woman who had been living inland so long, made her breathe deeply.

"Ah! Babiche!" she murmured, smiling at the smudgy spot on the wall, "What a naughty child I used to be!" She had a naive pride in this evidence of her early wickedness. But a moment later she was frowning, her eyes fixed on the grimy woodwork.

"What unspeakably lazy servants I must have! I shall send them away at once! Just as soon as that woman has brought my breakfast I shall say to her,

"'You are an abom-in-able housekeeper, pack your bags and go!'"

She had heard Mademoiselle D'Ormy send a servant away once. It gave a splendid sense of superiority to think that she was going to do it herself this time. She pulled her travel-stiff body over the edge of the bed, and grimacing as she swung her pavement-sore feet to the floor, she wrapped the lovely old dressing-gown about her and opened the door into the hall. She could not think of any other way in which to summon a servant whose name she did not know and so she whistled clearly as she sometimes did when she wanted to call Bele from the farther end of the orchard.

The house seemed filled with sounds, mutterings, babblings, little cries, the heavy whirr of the sewing machines, the splintering clatter of Tony, who was chopping his wares by the basement door—it seemed impregnated with odors, smudgy, burning, unsavory, smoky smells. She whistled again.

An unkempt head, a man's head, was thrust from the nursery door, in the quick glance with which she looked at him and beyond him she seemed to see a score of persons. There were not really so many of them, merely a slovenly woman who was pedaling the sewing machine with a baby tumbling at her feet, an eight-year-old who sat on the window ledge pulling bastings while a half-grown girl cooked something on a stove that had been propped in front of the fireplace.

Zeb's phrase—"filthy dirty heathen" trembled on Felicia's lips, her eyes burned hotly. She grew furiously angry. Her breast was heaving, her bare foot tapped impatiently on the chilly floor, but the man slammed the door before she could speak.

She stepped resolutely into the hall, she whistled again, this time imperiously.

No one answered.

She crossed to the bathroom beside the nursery. She was grimly determined now, she would bathe herself and dress and go down to the kitchen and speak at once to the servant. The bathroom door was slightly open but the skylight was so dusty that she could scarcely see. She put down her hand to turn the faucet and drew back in dismay. Her tub was already filled—with coal!

And behind her a voice ejaculated,

"You no taka mine fires! Get out!"

Felicia did "get out," speeding so recklessly back to Mademoiselle's old room that she was breathless as she shut the door behind her and leaned against it laughing weakly.

"Oh! Oh! I know it is all a dream! It's too ridiculous to be true!"

She found enough water in a pitcher on the table to bathe her face. She sat on the edge of the bed thinking hard as she brushed her hair.

"It is not a dream"—she shuddered, "The back yard is real—even with all the rubbish there, the back yard is real! The gate is there—the first thing I shall make them clean will be the back yard—after all, it won't be so difficult as my garden in the woods. I shall not have to wait to find the pattern, I know exactly how it all belongs. And I know that about this whole house. I shall"—she grew more determined, "make it all as it was before. First I shall put all these filthy dirty heathen out—it will be exactly like making the garden—only I shall have people pulled out instead of weeds—they are all like weeds, these filthy dirty people—I am not afraid of weeds."

But all the same, when she was dressed and had begun the perilous journey downward, she found herself very much afraid of the "weeds" that she encountered on her way to the tailor's missus.

Nor did she issue victoriously as she had planned from her attempt to send the tailor's missus away.

The tailor's missus stood her ground stoutly, she even forced Felicia to give her three dollars for room rent from Louisa's purse; the woman's awe of the night before had departed, she moaned strange things about her children's starving, she reiterated her absolute lack of belief that Felicia owned the house, she laughed toothlessly over such a thing being possible.

"You tell that to Mister Grady," she scoffed, "Mr. Grady, he is goin' to buy this house, comes the auction next Tuesday—"

Mr. Grady, Felicia discovered, was the rent collector; this fact at last was something to seize upon. If he was the rent collector and it was her house, certainly she could go and collect from him. She learned that he lived across the street, a grimy finger indicated where and she set forth valiantly.

Breakfastless, almost moneyless, her chin in the air, she marched across the street and faced the redoubtable Mr. Grady. He wasn't a bad sort at all, though it was quite evident that he, like the tailor's missus, hadn't the slightest idea that she really owned her house. He rubbed his stubby, sandy chin and hitched his shirt sleeve garter higher,

"I hain't collecting for myself," he assured her, "I only collects for the receiver for the estate—you can see 'im if you like—he's up in th' Temple Bar buildin'." He was so good as to jot down the number of the room for her. She thanked him and departed, leaving him staring after her, scratching his chin more violently than ever.

By noon she stood quietly outside Judge Harlow's door. She presented herself without parley. There was a calm determination about her that reminded him somehow of a fanatic with a great cause. And yet there was a mirthful twinkle in her eyes.

"It's been droll," she began, "I have been trying all day to make persons understand that it's my house. I can't make anybody believe me, not the tailor's missus, nor the rent collector nor the 'receiver for the estate,'" her drawling imitation of the redoubtable Mr. Grady made the Justice smile.

"Oh, you've talked with that scamp, have you?" he flung the door open and pulled out a chair for her.

"I've talked with a great many—scamps"—she caught at new words as delightedly as though they had been new flowers, and he laughed again. She was too absurd, this grotesquely garbed old maid! "I haven't found the Portia Person—" a note of gravity crept into her voice again, "but I'm going to do without him—I have a plan"—she leaned forward excitedly, "I thought it out—it's as good as the pattern of the garden—the reason you have to make me pay fifty dollars for— violating that Tenement Law is because there are too many persons in my house, isn't that it?"

He nodded.

"Then," she decided triumphantly, "it's quite simple. We must just put them out!"

"Miss Daniel come to judgment!" he congratulated her.

They talked quite seriously then. The matter of identification was not really droll, for there was literally no one to vouch for Felicia Day. He found it difficult to explain to her that while he did not in the least doubt her assertion that she was Felicia Day she would have to prove, legally, that she was.

If the "receiver for the estate" could find any of the papers that Felicia had signed for Mr. Burrel of course her signature would help, (he called a stenographer and wrote for a letter from the country doctor,) he explained regretfully that until she could prove that she was the person she claimed to be she could not actually take possession of the house.

"Then you can't 'actually' make me pay anything—those fines or taxes, until you prove that I'm the person who owes them—" She came back at him so quickly that she took his breath away.

"Again Miss Daniel comes to judgment!" he teased her. She put him in an extraordinary good humor with her alertness. Her persistence and her indomitable courage were such futile weapons against the armor of the law that they seemed pathetic, but her droll faith in herself and her absurd comments about the persons with whom she had been talking made him want to laugh as one laughs at a precocious child.

She left as abruptly as she had come, tucking Babiche under her arm in a deliciously matter-of-fact way.

"Good morning, Miss Day," he called after her.

She paused, she blushed furiously, she had forgotten Mademoiselle's manners. But she made up for it. She dropped him the most amusing curtsy with an upward glance like that of the one-eyed scrub woman who had been cleaning the corridor.

"Good marnin', yer Honor!" she groaned exactly like that rheumatic soul. He laughed silently, his head thrown back on his shoulders. How could he know that she couldn't help "pretending" that she was everybody she listened to!

"And she looks like a little old tramp," he recounted at luncheon to a friend, "Most extraordinary person, one minute she puts a lump in your throat—you're so sorry for her you could curse, and the next—Lordy! the next minute you wonder at her impertinence—it's not exactly impertinence either,—it's absolute frankness."

"No manners, eh?" suggested his friend.

"No manners at all. A manner," said the Justice neatly.

Back in the little hall room she sat dizzily on the edge of the bed and divided the last of Margot's dry sandwiches with Babiche. They were both ravenously hungry. Felicia turned the few coins out of Louisa's old purse and contemplated them. Wherever she had turned in these two busy days she had had to pay, she was perpetually asked for money.

And quite surely she must have some more. She couldn't ask Margot, and the "receiver for the estate" would give her none. She stared at the smug faced shepherdesses.

"Where," she thought, "Do persons get money?"

The shepherdesses smiled back stupidly.

Babiche answered her really. Having all there was to eat the wee dog settled herself uncomfortably on the thin pillow.

"If I knew where the Wheezy was I'd have her make you a cushion—oh! oh! Babiche! How stupid I've been! The Wheezy got money, Mademoiselle used to give it to her from Maman's purse, two dollars every day—for sewing—why, Babiche, I can sew beautifully—much better than the Wheezy!"

It was a delightful moment, a self-reliant, decisive moment. Her eyes sparkled, she caught up the ugly bonnet, she could hardly hurry fast enough to find The Woman's Exchange and Employment Agency. She even remembered the sign in the window.

"Applications for work received Tuesdays and Fridays." She was so glad that it was Friday that she could have whistled. So down the stairs they went again, the little dog and mistress, and straight around the corner, past the old church, there they stopped for Felicia to read what she hadn't stopped to read before,

"THIS PROPERTY FOR SALE OR TO LET SUITABLE FOR GARAGE OR MOVING PICTURES APPLY YOUR OWN BROKER"

She stumbled around uncollected garbage, she waited impatiently for impudent children to move out of her way, she thrilled with rage at the sordid world about her.

"That pattern of it all is gone—I can't see how it was unless I close my eyes," she thought.

But when she came to the faded sign "WOMAN'S EXCHANGE AND EMPLOYMENT AGENCY" she smiled. For that at least was exactly as it had been save that it looked tinier and dingier than it had in the old days. She opened the iron-grilled door, her eager heart anticipating the tinkling jangle of the spring bell at the rear, and when the shadowy curtains parted and a grizzled head, surmounted by gold-rimmed spectacles tucked above a worried forehead appeared, Felicia could have cried out with delight.

For there was the Disagreeable Walnut, limping more painfully than she had used to limp, blinking more uncertainly than she had used to blink. Her rasping voice came thinner and more peevish than it had twenty years ago but she called out just the same,

"Well, what's your business?"

Felicia listened dreamily; she seemed to be absorbing the whole shop, the dusty shelves lined with useless "fancy" work, into whose fashioning no fancy at all had crept; the cracked show counters filled with pasty china daubed with violets and cross-eyed cupids,—propped up rakishly in the very front of the dustiest, most battered case of all the fat string dolly leaned despondently and smiled her red floss smile.

"Oh, how you've lasted!" breathed Felicia.

"What?" shrilled the Disagreeable Walnut, blushing under her shriveled skin.

"I mean—the little person made of string—" murmured Felicia abashed. "I saw her here—when we came for The Wheezy—Mademoiselle D'Ormy and I."

The Disagreeable Walnut snorted.

"Oh, that Mademoiselle D'Ormy," she squinted through her adjusted glasses, her shaking, purple-veined hands fumbling with the silk that was wound around the bows to protect her thin old temples, "She hain't been here this long while, have you seen her?"

"Do you know me?" demanded Felicia stepping very close.

"Don't know as I do—yet it seems like I did too—you hain't been here in a long while, have ye?"

"Don't you remember—I lived in that same house where Mademoiselle D'Ormy stayed—she brought me in here when I was a little girl—when we came to get the Wheezy to sew—"

The Disagreeable Walnut shook her head.

"I never knew anybody named Wheezy."

"The Wheezy was fat—" Felicia puffed out her chest, tilted her chin downward and hunched up her shoulders like the Wheezy. She cleared her throat and panted and let her breath come sighingly through her pursed lips, "She couldn't see why under the shining canopy the Major had her make c-cushions for the dogs—"

The shop keeper nodded her recognition of The Wheezy.

"Oh, you mean Sophia Pease—dear! dear!" she wiped her eye glasses tremblingly, "She's been out to the Baptist Home for the Aged this long whiles. Her eyes went back on her—a nice sewer, as nice a sewer as we ever had—dear, dear! I don't know when anybody asked me about Sophia Pease—she made them dolls you was just mentioning—" she motioned toward the disconsolate string toy—"dear, dear! she made them even after she couldn't see for regular sewing—"

"Now can't you remember me?" reiterated Felicia pleadingly.

The Disagreeable Walnut shook her head.

"Can't say as I do—"

"But I am Felice—the little girl who came with Mademoiselle D'Ormy to get Miss Pease—can't you see that I am?"

The old woman's tittering laugh of denial made Felicia want to shake her.

"That child—why you hain't she—she wouldn't be the matter of half your age—you must be thirty-five or forty, hain't ye? She grew up and run away like the rest of her women folks—" she giggled sardonically, "Was a young limb, she was, I used to hear her whistling at them choir boys next door—a young limb—all the girls in that family was man- chasers—the mother run off with the rector's son—younger'n she was— by a good two years I should say, she must ha' been thirty if she was a minute—but pretty—prettier n' her mother—ever see the mother, Miss Trenton—Miss Montrose that was?"

"Did you?" breathed Felicia. "Oh, did you see Grandy's Louisa?"

"Did I ever see her?" the Disagreeable Walnut leaned her sharp elbows on the show case. "I see her when she was a bride—I'd just took charge here then—she was a high-stepper! The Major hadn't a penny when she married him but she had all the Montrose money and she got him—some say as she told him if he'd marry her she'd live on what he earned—but I guess he couldn't have earned the matter of her shoe strings—not the way she dressed—she was stylish and tasty in her dress—and then she eloped—with that lawyer fellow—some says she didn't elope with him, but she went off for some French property her mother had left her—but I dunno—she was an awful high-stepper. All I know is that after she was dead and the Major brought Miss Octavia home—"

"Did you see Maman? Did you?" Felicia could hardly breath, "Did you see Octavia—wasn't she sweet? Wasn't she darling—didn't you love her, love, love her?"

"Too high-stepping!" sniffed the old woman, "Whole lot of 'em was too high-stepping for me—never liked any of 'em—"

"She didn't step at all—" Felicia's anger was rising, "She just stayed in her bed and stayed in her bed—how dare you say you—oh! oh!" Color burned in her pale cheeks, "I won't have you say such things—"

"Well, I hain't quarreling with you about them folks," said the Disagreeable Walnut sententiously, "They're all dead and buried anyhow. And pore Sophia Pease might jes' as well be—mewed up in that Baptist home where her friends, if she's got any, can't see her excepting on Sundays—my stars! I wouldn't go to live in that Home, no sir, I wouldn't—nor I wouldn't want to live at the—"

"Can you tell me," Felicia broke in upon this flood of opinions, "Where I could go to see Miss Pease?"

"I'm telling you—the Baptist Home—"

"I do think she'd know me," Felicia murmured thoughtfully. "I do think she would." She moved toward the door, intent upon trying to see Miss Pease.

But the Disagreeable Walnut, for all that she was old, was quite capable of handling her job. She called petulantly after her retreating caller.

"What was you coming in for—anything you wanted to buy?"

Felicia turned.

"How stupid I am to forget. I came because it was Friday, you know, I wanted to have some work, please. For two dollars a day and lunch."

The shop keeper pulled a dusty ledger toward her.

"Are you registered or new?"

"I—I think I'm new, I'm not registered."

The ledger was pushed around toward her, the shop keeper reached fretfully for the spattered ink bottle.

"By the day or home work?"

"By the day," said Felicia decisively.

"Then sign here," a trembling finger indicated the line.

It was a new page. No one had signed it yet. At the top was printed,

NAME ADDRESS JOB APPLIED FOR DATE Mrs. or Miss.

And Felicia wrote, guiding the rusty pen carefully. Last of all, she wrote just after the printed Miss, in firm letters, "By The Day," and pushed back the book.

The Disagreeable Walnut pursed her lips, she couldn't really see anything through the blur of her glasses.

The bell jangled, a brisk old person, much like the Disagreeable Walnut, save that she looked agreeable, entered breathlessly.

"Sorry I was late," she dumped various bundles on the counter, "How'd you make out, Susan?" She eyed Felicia as she began pulling at her gloves. "Did my sister find what you wanted?"

"She wants work," quavered Susan, considerably less reliant than she'd been a moment before. "I dunno where the work book is. I declare I can't keep track of where you put things, Sarah—is there anybody could use her? She wants sewing."