Bread

by Charles G. Norris

BREAD

CHAPTER I

§ 1

The cat was crying to get in. Jeannette, deep in slumber, was irritated by persistent mewings. Every once in awhile the outside screen door at the back of the apartment shut with a small clap as the animal, sinking its claws into the wire mesh, tried to pull it open. The noise awoke Jeannette finally and she sat up with a start.

It was morning. Gray light filled the room. She peered at the alarm clock, blinking her eyes, and saw there were still twenty minutes before she had to get up. In the next room, the sound of a closing window announced that Beatrice Alexander was already astir.

“She’s put Mitzi out,” thought Jeannette, drawing the bed clothes over an exposed shoulder. “I wish she’d remember to leave the door ajar.”

Presently Beatrice’s steps passed in the hall and in another moment the annoyance ceased. Jeannette dropped gratefully back to sleep. But it seemed she had hardly lost consciousness when the whirring clock bell aroused her again. Though still drowsy, she immediately got up; she never permitted herself to remain in bed after the moment arrived for rising; indulgence of this kind was weakness of character, and she despised weakness in herself or in others. As she dressed, she heard Beatrice in the kitchen busy with breakfast preparations. From the window a glimpse of the street showed the sun’s first rays striking obliquely through the haze of early morning.

The apartment in Waverly Place had now been her home for seven years; she and Beatrice Alexander had taken it together a month after her mother’s death, and life for the two women as time rolled on had become undeviating in its routine. There was small variation in their days.

It was Beatrice’s business to prepare breakfast. She rose at seven; Jeannette half-an-hour later. The meal was always the same: fruit, boiled eggs, four pieces of toast, and a substitute for coffee,—cubes of a prepared vegetable material dissolved in hot water. Beatrice set the table daintily, with a small Japanese lunch cloth and a yellow bowl filled with bright red apples in its center. Knives, forks and spoons were nicely arranged and she never neglected to put tumblers of drinking water beside the triangularly folded, fringed napkins, and finger-bowls at each place with a bit of peel sliced from the bottoms of the grapefruits or oranges which began the breakfast. Beatrice was a fastidious person, Jeannette often thought gratefully; she liked “things nice.”

While her friend was busy in kitchen and dining-room, Jeannette dressed with her usual scrupulous carefulness. She gave but meager attention to household affairs; these were Beatrice’s province; it was Beatrice who did the ordering, paid the bills and managed the small establishment. Jeannette’s companion was much like Alice and these duties came naturally to her. Besides, during the years Mrs. Sturgis and her daughter had lived together, it had been her mother who attended to such matters; Jeannette had grown accustomed to leaving household details to someone else. She took pains to explain this to Beatrice when they discussed the project of an apartment together and the latter had assured her it would be quite satisfactory. There had never been the slightest friction between the two women; Beatrice Alexander, with her soft, whispery voice and shy manner, was one of the sweetest-tempered persons in the world.

The years had dealt not unkindly with Jeannette. At forty-three, she was still a handsome woman,—no longer graceful and willowy, perhaps,—but erect, aggressive, substantial-looking. There was a solidarity about her now; her arms were big and round, her shoulders broad and plump, her bosom well-developed; she was thirty pounds heavier, and walked with a sturdy tread. There was gray in her hair, too, and a certain settled expression about her mouth that proclaimed middle age, but she was a fine looking woman with clear eyes and skin, an impressive carriage, and much that was commanding in poise. She dressed smartly and was always meticulously neat. Every morning she donned a fresh shirtwaist, crisply laundered. It was a matter of concern to her that this should set so snugly and correctly where it joined the plain dark tailored skirt that closely fitted her back, the effect should be of the skirt holding the blouse trimly in place. When she had completed her toilet, she was the embodiment of trigness and trimness, from her dark lusterless hair with its streaks of gray, which she now wore in a smooth sweep encircling her head like a bird’s unruffled wing, to her tan-booted feet in sheer brown silk stockings. She always had taken a great deal of pains in the matter of attire, and her hats, shoes and garments were of the latest approved styles and the best materials, and came from the most exclusive shops in New York. She still observed the strictest simplicity in the matter of clothes when she dressed for the office.

She surveyed herself now in the mirror with approval, and as she noted her fine tall figure, the breadth of her shoulders, the round, neat, firm waist line, her calm, strong face,—shrewd, capable, resourceful,—she could understand the awe and respect with which the girls in her department regarded her. A hint of a smile touched her resolute lips as she thought that to them she must appear a super-woman, a sort of queen, the fount of all wisdom, justice and power. She liked the idea.

She flung back the covers to let her bed air during the day, and righted the flagrant disorder in her room with a few effective movements. As she opened her closet door or bureau drawers, the scrupulous neatness of their contents pleased her; the row of dresses in the closet suggested the orderliness of a company of soldiers; her shoes and slippers, each pair equipped punctiliously with boot-trees, ranged themselves on a shelf in effective array, her lingerie was carefully be-ribboned, folded in piles, and a scent of sachet arose from its lacy whiteness.

As she busied herself she came upon a muss of face powder that had been spilled upon the glass top of her bureau. A small sound of annoyance escaped her. She crossed the hall to the bathroom, returned with the moistened end of a soiled towel, resurrected from the laundry basket, and wiped up the offending litter vigorously.

About to quit the room she paused a moment with her hand on the door-knob for a final inspection, and turned back to make sure the lower bureau drawer was locked and that she had put the key in its hiding place under the rug; she raised the window an inch higher; a white thread on the floor attracted her eye and she picked it up with thumb and finger to deposit in the waste-basket before she joined Beatrice Alexander in the dining-room. A glance at her wrist watch assured her she was on time to the minute.

“Morning, Beat,” she said saluting her companion. “What was the matter with Mitzi this morning?”

“I let her out early; she was clawing the carpet and growling. She wouldn’t stop, so I just had to get up and put her out.”

“Strange,” commented Jeannette, eyeing the cat who blinked at her comfortably from beside an empty soup plate that had held her bread and milk. She began to talk baby talk to the pet:

“Mitzi-witzi! Yes, oo was,—oo went out to see a feller,—ess oo did....”

The two women sat down to the breakfast table together. Jeannette spread her World out before her; Beatrice propped the Times against a water pitcher. They picked at their fruit, raised egg spoons to their lips delicately, broke off bits of toast and inserted them in their mouths, sipped their coffee with little fingers extended. Silence reigned except for the small noises of cup and spoon, and the crackle of newspapers.

“I do think France ought to be more lenient with Germany,” Beatrice remarked at length, adjusting her eye-glasses.

“I’d make her pay to the last mark she’s got,” asserted Jeannette. She folded back her newspaper carefully to another page.

“They had quite an accident in the subway,” Beatrice observed.

“So I see.... Does seem to me the papers are awfully hard on the Interborough. I should think they ought to be permitted to charge an eight-cent fare; everything else is going up in price.”

“Do you suppose that Hennessy woman will get off?” asked Beatrice after an interval.

“Well, I’d like to see her.”

“Senator Knowles died, they think, from drinking whiskey that had wood alcohol in it.”

“Served him right. I wish they all would.”

§ 2

At twenty minutes past eight, Jeannette put on her hat carefully before the mirror, drew about her shoulders her tipped fox scarf, jerked her hands vigorously into stout tan gloves, and proceeded down the two flights of stairs to the street. As she descended she noted with customary pleasure the effect of the cream-painted woodwork in the halls, the width of the stairs, and the flood of light from the skylight above the stair-well which effectively illuminated the interior of the house. She and Beatrice had indeed been fortunate in finding a home in such a pleasant, well-arranged building. It was the same apartment Miss Holland and Mrs. O’Brien had occupied for so many years, until the latter married again, and the former went to live with her nephew, Jerry,—who was a Commander now, had a wife and babies, and was stationed at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The trend of Jeannette’s thoughts reminded her she had not been to see Miss Holland for nearly two months; she resolved upon a visit in the immediate future.

The street was filled with morning sunshine as Jeannette stepped out upon the stone flagging of the lower hall, closed the inner door behind her, and felt in her purse with gloved fingers for the key to the mail-box.

She found two letters for herself: one from Alice saying that Etta was going to town on Saturday, would love to lunch with Aunt Jeannette and be eternally grateful to her if she’d help her pick out the dress; the other was a circular from Wanamaker’s. It was the latter rather than the former communication that started the train of thought which occupied Jeannette’s mind as she firmly stepped along the Avenue. Her walk to the office took twenty-three minutes and as she passed Fourteenth Street she noted by a clock in front of a jeweller’s store that she was a minute ahead of time. The Wanamaker circular set forth the advantages of a sale of women’s suits, yet it was not the attractive prices nor the smart models that occasioned Jeannette’s thoughts. The envelope containing the circular was addressed to “Mrs. Martin Devlin.” No one called her by that name any more. When she went back to work as Mr. Corey’s secretary, she had been welcomed as “Miss Sturgis.” “Miss Sturgis” had meant something in the affairs of the Chandler B. Corey Company; no significance was attached to “Mrs. Devlin.” It seemed wiser to drop her married name,—and after the break with Martin, she had no desire to keep it.

Odd to have been a man’s wife, to have belonged to someone! It would be hard to think of herself as a “Mrs.” again, to call herself “Mrs. Martin Devlin.” How many years ago had it been? Fifteen? Sixteen? Something like that. Had there really ever been an interval of four years in her life when she had been a married woman? It seemed to her she had always been part of the Chandler B. Corey Company,—or the Corey Publishing Company as it now was called,—part of it without a break since those days of long ago when it had occupied three floors in a clumsy old office building and had looked out, with Schirmer’s Music Store and Tiffany’s, upon Union Square. What a slim, tall, ignorant, ill-equipped young thing she had been that day she went eagerly to meet Roy at the office and had watched Miss Reubens looking at photographs in the reception room! Jeannette smiled now at the memory of herself. It strained the imagination to believe that the present Miss Sturgis of the Mail Order Department had been that awkward girl so long ago.

The years—the years! The changes they had wrought! Jeannette thought of her last painful interview with Martin and the shadow of a frown came to her brow. She had gone over every detail of it a million times. It had indeed been harrowing. Poor Martin! He had pleaded so hard for her to come back to him, he had offered to do anything she wanted, but it was too late then; she couldn’t make him see it. She reminded him again and again that he had talked just the same way when he begged her to marry him; she had doubtfully agreed then, had consented to give their union a trial, and it had turned out a failure,—a hopeless failure. No, she didn’t blame him; she told him so over and over and admitted it was as much her fault as his; she was no more fitted to be a wife than he a husband; many people were constituted that way; they weren’t suited to married life. She pointed out to him that unless a marriage was happy, it was a mistake, and neither he nor she had been happy as man and wife. Why, she had never been for one minute as happy married to Martin Devlin as she had been since she became her own mistress again! She loved her independence, she told him, too much to surrender it to any man. And he? Well, it had been clearly demonstrated that he liked the society of men and enjoyed outdoor sports more than he did being a husband. She tried hard not to reproach him, had even said she saw no reason why they, two, could not go on being friends, occasionally seeing one another, but at that point Martin got angry,—a sort of madness seemed to take hold of him and he had said all sorts of terrible things to her, even called her names,—unforgettable ones. It had ended in a dreadful scene, a terrible scene,—dreadful and terrible because in spite of the fury and bitterness that gripped them, they knew love still remained. Jeannette would never forget the storm of tears, the abject grief that had come to her at their parting. Love Martin though she did, she realized she loved her re-won independence more, and she would not,—could not return to him. Mr. Corey had taken her in; she had promised to work for him for a while at least, and it was utterly impossible for her to tell him, after he had discharged his other secretary, that she was going back to her husband again. If Martin had only given her a year or two she might have been willing to be his wife once more, and she had told him as much, but Martin refused to listen; he had thrown down his challenge and forced her then and there to choose between her job and himself. There was nothing else for her to do; she had made her decision, and Martin had gone his way. She had never regretted it, she said to herself now; she was far better off to-day, far happier and more contented than she ever would have been as Mrs. Martin Devlin. As his wife she would have had ties and known sickness; she and he would have quarrelled and there would have been everlasting recriminations; she would have lost her looks, and her clothes would have become shabby; she would have grown familiar with poverty and have had to fight for herself and family the way Alice did,—poor, deserving, hard-working Alice, with her five children and unsuccessful husband! No doubt she, Jeannette, had missed much in life, but hers had been the safe course, the prudent and sure one. She was now in charge of the Mail Order Department of the Corey Publishing Company, she was earning fifty dollars a week, had five Liberty bonds all paid for, and was beholden to no one.... Of Martin she had not heard for years. On a visit to Alice at Cohasset Beach, she had one Sunday encountered ’Stel Teschemacher and that lady had informed her that Zeb Kline, while on a brief visit to Philadelphia, had seen Martin, and Martin had an agency for a motor-car there and was doing quite well. Jeannette would have liked to hear more, but she did not care to have ’Stel Teschemacher suspect she was interested.

It was ’Stel’s husband who sold the Beardsleys their home at Cohasset Beach. The purchase had followed the death of Roy’s father and the return of Roy and his family to New York. Dr. Beardsley had not lived long enough to make a writer’s career for his son possible. His death had sadly broken up the small home in Mill Valley, and Roy and Alice had deemed it wiser to put the little money the clergyman left them into a home of their own than spend it in paying rent, butchers’ and grocers’ bills on the chance that Roy’s pen might some day earn a livelihood sufficient for their needs. He had been only moderately successful as an author. His dog story had been published and he had placed several short stories but these had been few and far between and then little Frank had come to add his chubby countenance to the family circle and his parents decided a writer’s career was too precarious for a man with a family. A job on a newspaper or magazine would insure a steady income. So with grief over their bereavement and disappointment in their hearts for the abandoned profession, Roy and his wife returned to New York and then in quick succession had come the finding of his position on the Quart-z-Arts Review which carried with it a moderate salary, the purchase of the house at Cohasset Beach, and in time the arrival of the small Jeannette,—’Nettie she was called to distinguish her from her aunt,—and Baby Roy, who was seven years old now and had recently asserted his manhood by resenting the identifying adjective by which he had been known since birth. Jeannette paused a moment in her retrospective thoughts to calculate: Twenty-two years! Yes,—Alice and Roy had been married twenty-two years! They were an old married couple now.

§ 3

She realized abruptly she had reached the office. Men and women, up and down the street, were converging in their courses toward the doors of the publishing company. The great concrete block of eight stories, crowded now to the limit of its capacity, with the thundering presses on the lower floors, had often seemed to her a monster that sucked in through its tiny mouth each morning a small army of workers, mulled them about all day between its ruminating jaws, fed on their juices and spewed them forth at evening to go their ways and gather new strength during the night to feed its hungry maw again upon the morrow.

Though the picture was grim and repellent, she cherished no hostility toward the institution that employed her. With the exception of the four-year interlude of adventuring in matrimony, she had been an employee of the self-same concern since she was eighteen; for nearly twenty years her name had appeared upon its pay-roll; in November she could make that very boast. More than any building in the world this block of steel and concrete was bound up with her destiny; she had spent most of the days of her life within it; she had seen its beginnings, had watched it spring into being, had had a hand in altering and adapting it to the needs of business, had observed its almost barren floors slowly fill year after year with human activity until now the use of every square foot of space was a matter of debate; she was one of the half dozen still gleaning a livelihood within its walls to-day who could speak of a time before its existence had even been conceived.

Most of those early associates on Union Square were gone now,—dead or following other lines of endeavor. Old Kipps still pottered about in the manufacturing department, Mr. Cavendish white-haired, gray-moustached and rosy, still edited Corey’s Commentary; Miss Travers, her merry face now lined with many criss-crossed wrinkles, had succeeded Mr. Olmstead and while not accorded the title of Auditor, which he had enjoyed, was known as the Cashier. Then there was Sidney Frank Allister, who, while he did not date back to the Union Square days, was still to be reckoned among those early associated with the fortunes of the publishing company, and now very much identified with them since he had become President and sat in the seat of Chandler B. Corey.

For Mr. Corey was dead. He had died the year Jeannette lost her mother and had followed his son, Willis, to the grave after a few months. Mrs. Corey had left him a widower many years before. There remained only his daughter, Babs, in an Adirondack sanitarium for the insane, to inherit his wealth and fifty-one per cent of the stock of the business he had created. He died a rich man and his will provided that his worldly possessions should be divided equally between his two children, their heirs and assigns, and of these last there were none, for Willis had never married and Babs could not. Jeannette often used to muse upon the futility of human ambition when she thought of the man she had served so long as secretary. She knew it had been the great desire of his life to found a publishing house that should become identified with the growth of American literature and pass on down the years in the hands of the Corey family, father and son succeeding one another after the fashion of some of the great English houses.

One day while sitting in his office intent upon affairs of business, his head dropped forward and banged on the hard surface of his desk before him, and he was dead. His heart had suddenly grown tired of its work. Even before he was laid away at Woodlawn, there had begun the mad scramble for the control of stock which would elect his successor. Jeannette never learned how Mr. Allister succeeded in obtaining it, but Mr. Featherstone had shortly been eliminated entirely from the affairs of the company and it was whispered that Mr. Kipps had played a double game. However that may have been, Sidney Frank Allister was by far the best man to fill Corey’s place, in Jeannette’s opinion. He was not so shrewd nor so far-seeing, but he had certain literary qualifications which fitted him for the position. Mr. Featherstone, Jeannette had early come to regard as a blustering blow-hard, while Mr. Kipps was hardly grammatical in speech or in letters, and had grown into a fussy old man. Francis Holm or Walt Chase might have proven themselves even better material, but three years prior to Mr. Corey’s death, both these young men had broken away from the old organization; Holm had launched forth into the publishing business for himself, and Walt Chase had gone to Sears, Roebuck & Co. in Chicago at a salary, it was rumored, of ten thousand a year, and Jeannette had succeeded him as head of the Mail Order Department.

Much as she had enjoyed being secretary to Mr. Corey, she was forced to realize as the years rolled by, that the position held no future for her. She would always be the president’s secretary as long as Mr. Corey lived but against the congenial work and easy rôle her ambition had protested. Recollections of early resolutions she had made on entering the business world returned to disturb her complacency. She remembered vowing then she would go to the very top and some day become herself an executive instead of a secretary. She saw no reason why she should not follow in Walt Chase’s footsteps and be worth ten thousand a year, if not to the Corey Company then to some other. She had great confidence in herself, felt especially qualified to do mail order work, and was sure she could increase sales and manage the department better than Walt Chase. It was a pet idea of hers that women, not men, bought books by mail, and she was confident that attacks directed at women, written from a feminine standpoint, would show results. When the offer from Chicago came and Chase announced he was going, she determined suddenly to seize the opportunity and asked Mr. Corey for Chase’s place; she had played secretary long enough, she told him,—she wanted her chance at bigger work.

There had been a great deal of demurring and discussion before she was allowed to try her hand. Mr. Kipps and Mr. Featherstone had vigorously opposed the plan, arguing that while Miss Sturgis had proven herself an incomparable secretary, there was no indication she would be equally successful in charge of the Mail Order Department. Walt Chase had built up a steady sale for the company’s publications, and had been, doing many thousands of dollars’ worth of business a year. Mr. Kipps and Mr. Featherstone shared the opinion that a woman was not competent to manage affairs involving so much money,—they were too large for the feminine mind to grasp. They contended, too, that she had had no experience in mail order affairs, and that a young man, named Owens, who had been Chase’s assistant for over a year, was his logical successor, and had been led to expect the promotion; it was doubtful, they said, whether he and Mr. Sparks, and old Mr. Harris and the one or two other men who had been under Walt Chase would consent to remain if a woman was placed in charge of them; this particular branch of the business had become exceedingly profitable and it was pointed out to Mr. Corey that he was in great danger of demoralizing it by permitting a girl to assume its management.

Jeannette had stood firm and resolutely pressed her request in the face of opposition which she considered stupid and which angered her. Mr. Corey finally agreed to give her a trial although it was clear he had his misgivings. But during the nine years in which Jeannette had filled the coveted position, she had amply demonstrated to everyone’s satisfaction her faith in herself to be warranted, and this in spite of the fact that Owens and Sparks had promptly resigned as predicted by Mr. Featherstone and Mr. Kipps, and for a time the work had been demoralized indeed.

Yet she triumphed, as she knew she would, and the ideas she had long cherished for conducting mail order campaigns had borne fruit. Last year she had the satisfaction of stating in her annual report that the business of her department had doubled in size since she had taken it in charge. It had been a long struggle fraught with interference and constant criticism of her methods. It had been particularly hard at first when Mr. Kipps supervised everything she did and vetoed some of her pet projects. He had hampered her in every way he could, not because he had any personal feeling against her but because she was a woman and he had no faith in a woman’s judgment. That was the way he had always treated Miss Holland; but now since Miss Holland had resigned and gone to live with her nephew in Brooklyn, he was willing at any minute to wax eloquent in praise of her extraordinary ability: ah, yes,—yes, indeed,—Miss Holland was a remarkable woman,—fitted in every way for business,—brain like a man’s,—wonderfully clear-sighted, excellent judgment; they didn’t “make” many women like Miss Holland,—she was the exception, one in a million!

Jeannette had to contend against such prejudice for the first year or two, but eventually she overcame it. Mr. Corey helped her whenever possible. She strove to keep the affairs of her department to herself and when forced to seek higher authority, made a practice of going directly to the President who had been the first to be convinced of her ability. As time went on, Kipps and the other members of the firm inclined to question her gradually allowed her to go her way. It had taken nearly a decade to win their confidence but there was satisfaction in the thought that at last it was hers, the victory was complete. Of course old Mr. Kipps would always purse his lips and frown dubiously about anything she proposed for he would never be completely convinced of her ability until she followed in Miss Holland’s footsteps, but Kipps was stooped and aged now and little attention was paid to what he said or did. The Board of Directors was satisfied with the generalship of Miss Sturgis whose monthly reports of sales and profits confirmed their confidence. When some other department reported a loss, or when business in general was poor, the Mail Order Department could be depended upon to show a consoling profit.

§ 4

One section of the sixth floor was Jeannette’s domain. She had tried for years to have her department walled off by partitions but the best she had been able to obtain for herself and her girls was a line of screens and bookcases. She had twenty-four clerks under her now, although the number fluctuated, particularly during October when the fall campaign was in progress. Then her force often swelled to over a hundred and the extra help was quartered temporarily in neighboring vacant lofts and offices, rented for a few weeks. She then had her lieutenants to superintend the work, which for the most part consisted merely of folding and inserting circulars in envelopes, sealing and stamping.

Her department was well organized; the work had been so systematized that it now moved with perfect smoothness. Old Sam Harris,—who represented all that was left of Walt Chase’s régime,—supervised the card catalogues; Miss Stenicke was in charge of the girls; the “inquiries” were checked and answered by Mrs. M’Ardle, while orders were entered and forwarded to the stock room for filling by little Miss Lacy. Jeannette devoted herself to the preparation of copy for letters, circulars and advertisement. This was the most important part of the work, and she believed her time and brains could not be better employed. She kept huge scrap-books in which she pasted circulars and letters issued by other mail order houses and spent hours poring over them.

§ 5

Her desk stood on a low platform and from this vantage-point she could overlook her department as a school teacher surveys her schoolroom. She prided herself she could tell at a glance what any particular girl ought to be doing; if ever in doubt she promptly summoned Mrs. M’Ardle to her desk and inquired. All the girls respected and admired her; they knew her to be fair-dealing and straightforward, though swift in censure where merited. She liked to have them think of her in this way and cultivated the idea.

“You’re conscientious and you try hard,” she would say in admonishing some unfortunate bungler. “I want to be just to you. In conducting the affairs of this department, I want to be as lenient as I can. I strive to forget personalities and think only of my assistants,—or perhaps I had better say ‘associates,’—as co-helpers in a big machine, each one functioning to the best of her ability at her particular piece of work. I’ve explained my ideas to Mr. Allister repeatedly. I want the girls in the Mail Order Department to be every one her own boss, to come and go as she pleases, and feel responsible—not to me but to the work.... I want to be a ‘big sister’ to every girl under me. I’m placed here to help, advise and direct, not to scold. But if you fail to perform properly the work assigned you, if you’re clumsy and careless and haphazard in your methods, then it is my duty to call the fact to your attention.... I want to be fair to everyone; I have no favorites....”

The lecture might continue at some length particularly if Miss Stenicke, Mrs. M’Ardle or little Miss Lacy was within earshot.

For a long time this Mail Order branch of the business of which she was the head had called forth Jeannette’s great pride. She had felt it was all hers,—her work. But of late, she had been stirred less and less. After all what had been accomplished? For nearly ten years she had bent her energies to making this phase of the activities of the Corey Publishing Company aboundingly successful. There no longer remained any question as to whether or not she had achieved her purpose. A year or two ago a recalcitrant spirit among her girls had immediately aroused in her a determination to break it; the discovery of an error at once had challenged her to trace it to its source; the questioning of her authority or trespassing upon her prerogatives had stirred her upon the instant to battle. One of the keenest pleasures of her days had been to draft laws that should govern her girls and to see that these were enforced. She had begun to detect in herself within the last year or two an increasing indifference to all such things,—she did not care as she once had cared. She was no longer hampered or troubled by those “downstairs”; her assistants and her girls gave her small occasion for supervision; the work of the department ran on well-oiled wheels. With opposition eliminated, the task of organization perfected, the maximum volume of business attained, there remained nothing to fire her spirit or brain, to stimulate fresh effort. And she was distressed by a suspicion that more and more persistently obtruded itself upon her consciousness that perhaps she was getting old, that the indifference to what went on about her and to her work was merely a sign of approaching age!

She rebelled at the idea; she put it from her vigorously; she refused to entertain it. Why, she was only forty-three! She was in the heyday of her powers. Her judgment, her mind, her capacities were never so keen as now. She was equal to far more exacting, more difficult work. Disturbed by this fear, she decided to look about her for fresh fields of endeavor. There was no higher position in the Corey Publishing Company open to her; more important places were all filled by members of the firm, and it was not likely that any one of them would step aside and give her a chance at his work. No,—though proud of her long years of service and her record with the publishing company,—she decided that neither was of sufficient importance to keep her indefinitely on its pay-roll until she was ready to follow in Miss Holland’s footsteps. She let it be known in mail order circles that she was looking for a job.

Of Walt Chase she continued to think enviously. She had heard he was now one of the big men in Sears, Roebuck & Company, a fact that exasperated her, because she felt herself to be cleverer than he, more able in every respect. He was getting ten thousand—twelve thousand—fifteen thousand,—whatever it was,—a year and climbing the ladder of success rung after rung, while she was doing the work he had left behind him at the Corey Publishing Company in a far more efficient, economical, and profitable way and was being paid fifty dollars a week!

One day she learned of a vacancy in the American Suit & Cloak Company, where they were looking for someone familiar with mail order work. She wrote and applied for the position. A conference with the General Manager followed. It developed he was in search of a man,—a woman, it was feared, was not qualified to do the work,—but the Manager admitted he knew Miss Sturgis by reputation and would be glad to make a place for her in his organization if she was dissatisfied where she was,—and he could promise her,—well, he could pay her thirty-five dollars a week. Jeannette declined and eased her mind by writing a coldly worded letter of thanks and regret; the General Manager of the American Suit & Cloak Company must have a poor opinion of her sense of values, if he expected her to resign from a position where she was the head of a department and receiving fifty dollars a week to accept an underling’s place at a smaller salary! But fifty dollars a week from the Corey Publishing Company was far below what she was worth, Jeannette considered. It infuriated her to think that while Mr. Allister and those “downstairs” were glib with their commendation of her work, there was never any talk of expressing this appreciation by a raise in salary.

§ 6

Her first business in the mornings upon reaching her desk was to fasten a sheet of paper about each of her wrists and pin another to the front of her shirtwaist as a protection against dirt. It was almost impossible to go through half a day and keep one’s linen clean without these shields. Dust from the street filtered in through the windows, that must be kept open at the top for ventilation and occasionally little feathery balls of soot made their appearance. Contact with office furniture always held the risk of a smudge. Jeannette had her desk and chair thoroughly wiped off by one of her girls before she reached the office in the morning and again when she went to lunch but in an hour or two after these protective measures, she would begin to feel grit under the tips of her fingers and observe a fine gray layer on the surfaces of white paper.

She usually arrived five or ten minutes before nine o’clock at which hour the business of the day was supposed to begin. Never late herself, she had trained her girls to be equally punctual. It was a matter of pride with her that in the Mail Order Department work began promptly on the stroke of the hour. There was no formality about the way it commenced. Without sign or sound from Jeannette the girls set about their various duties with simultaneous accord, the noise of chatter and laughter died away, there was a general scraping of chair legs on the cement floor, and the buzz of typewriters, like the chirping of marsh frogs, began slowly to gather volume.

First Jeannette turned her attention to her “Incoming” basket, neatly stacked the clipped correspondence, memorandums and communications before her, and, armed with a thick blue pencil, began their disposal, marking certain letters and papers a vigorous “No” or “O.K.-J.S.”—pinning a sheet of scratch pad to others and scribbling thereon a brief direction or query. Most of the pile before her disappeared into her “Outgoing” basket, but in an upper corner of her desk was a folder inscribed: “Mr. Allister,” and into this she would occasionally slip a letter or memorandum. Its contents would go to him by boy later in the day; once in a while she carried some important matter to him herself but she troubled him as little as possible. She tried to keep the affairs of her department to herself; the less she attracted the attention of the Directors, the less they were likely to ask for reports or feel called upon to supervise or investigate her work; she preferred to let the monthly statements of sales speak for her.

By ten o’clock the “Incoming” basket would be empty, and she could begin the preparation of copy for an advertisement, a circular letter, or the arrangement of a leaflet setting forth the features of a new set of books. This was the work she loved best to do, knowing she was unusually good at it; there were daily evidences her copy “pulled,” that the touches she gave her advertisements were productive of sales. No one “downstairs” appreciated how clever she was, though there were the reports of sales to attest to her ability.

She often wished there was more of this particular kind of ad-writing and circular-preparing to be done, but the books of the Corey Publishing Company sold by mail, year after year, varied little in type: These were a standard dictionary, a Home Library of Living Literature, a set of handbooks for Garden and Kitchen, and then there were the dressmaking books issued in connection with the pattern department: “How to Sew,” “How to Knit,” “How to Embroider.” In addition to the circularizing for these was that for subscriptions to the magazines, offered in conjunction with some particular premium.

When a special letter had to be prepared, Jeannette preferred to write it at home or come back to the office at night when she could be alone and undisturbed. There was continual interruption during the day; she rarely enjoyed five minutes of consecutive thought. One source of distraction and a great annoyance was having personally to initial every request for supplies, no matter how trifling. This was one of Mr. Kipps’ schemes. He had made it a rule that heads of departments must O.K. all such requisitions. A paper of pins, a pot of paste, a pad of paper could not be issued by the stock clerk to any of her girls without Jeannette’s initials being affixed to the request. All day long she was interrupted by: “C’n I have a pencil, Miss Sturgis?” “Please O.K. my slip for some paper, Miss Sturgis.” “’Xcuse me for interruptin’ you, Miss Sturgis, but I need some pen points.” Mr. Kipps’ idea was to prevent waste, but Jeannette frequently realized with exasperation that her time was of a great deal more value to the company than pencils, pens or paper, and there was a far greater waste in interrupting a line of constructive thinking than in trying to conserve the supplies of the stock room.

The telephone at her desk was continually at her ear: the composing room wanted the cut for Job 648; the engraver didn’t have the “Ben Day” she had specified; Mr. Sanders, Mr. Kipps’ assistant, wished to know if she could use a Five-and-a-quarter envelope just as well as a Number Six; she had requisitioned five thousand two-cent stamps and they had not been delivered; she needed a hundred thousand more “Dictionary” circulars, and would like Stamper & Bachellor to submit her some “m.f. laid, 24 by 36” in various tints; the stencil machine was out of order and she wanted to borrow one from the mailing department.

One thing followed another all day long.

“If we insert that return postal, we can’t mail this attack under two-cent postage.”

“Hello, Miss Sturgis,—say, Events can only give us a half page; will you prepare new copy for the smaller space? They’re waiting to go to press.”

“Miss Sturgis, we’re running short on ‘How to Knit.’”

“Miss Sturgis, we’ll have to get in some extra girls if you want those letters signed by hand.”

“Miss Sturgis, do you want these mimeographed or printed?”

“Miss Sturgis, Mr. Allister’d like to see you.”

“Miss Sturgis, c’n I have some pins?”

At a quarter past twelve she went to lunch. She made a point of going promptly. There was a time, some years back, when she had fallen into the habit of letting her lunch hour lapse over into the afternoon, allowing the demands upon her further and further to postpone it, and it had been two o’clock, sometimes three before she went out. As a result, indigestion and headaches commenced seriously to trouble her, and the doctor advised a regular hour for lunch. At twelve-fifteen, therefore, she compelled herself to drop whatever she had in hand and leave the office; one of the girls was instructed to call her attention to the time.

She always went to the Clover Tea Room for her luncheon. This was a little basement restaurant operated by two elderly sisters. It was prettily appointed with yellow lights, yellow candles, yellow embroidered table doilies and yellow painted furniture. Jeannette had her own special table daily reserved for her. Lunch cost sixty-five cents and consisted generally of a small fruit cocktail, a chop, a little fish, or an individual meat pie, with an accompanying dab of vegetable, and a dessert.

She was accustomed to enter the Tea Room at twelve-twenty almost to the minute: a tall, fine-figured, handsome woman in her dark tailor-made, her modish hat and fur scarf. She would proceed directly to her table, exchanging a smile and a word of greeting with the elder Miss Hanlon as she passed her desk. Unbuttoning her gloves and drawing them from her hands, she would study the handwritten menu:

Minnie would presently come for her order.

“Morning, Miss Sturgis; what’s it to-day? Stew looks good.”

“Good morning, Minnie. Well, if you say so, I’ll have the stew. And don’t forget to bring lemon with my tea.”

The Tea Room would be but partially filled when Jeannette entered, but as she waited for her lunch other people began to arrive. Ah, here was Miss Hogan of Lyman & Howell, and here was that pretty Miss Thompson of Altman’s; Mr. Crothers of the Stationers’ Supply was late,—no, here he was; Mrs. Diggs had that funny looking hat on again; this person was a stranger and that couple, busily talking, were quite evidently shoppers. A gray-haired woman in the corner appeared at the Tea Room several times of late; Jeannette decided she must ask Miss Hanlon who she was, and find out where she was employed.

At quarter to one or perhaps ten minutes before the hour, Jeannette would pour a little drinking water from her tumbler over her finger-tips into her empty dessert saucer, moisten her lips, wipe them on the little yellow napkin, and draw on her gloves nicely. She always left ten cents for Minnie and paid her check at Miss Hanlon’s desk on her way out. Usually she had the better part of half-an-hour before it was time to return to the office. Between the Tea Room and the corner of the Avenue, she almost invariably encountered Miss Travers, the Cashier, who likewise patronized the little restaurant. They would nod and smile at one another as they passed but neither had time to pause for words. Jeannette frequently had a small errand to perform: gloves to get at the cleaners’, her shoes polished, a bit of shopping, a book to exchange at the library. When there was nothing specially pressing, she would pay a visit to a bustling Fifth Avenue store, where she would make her way through crowds of jostling women, and inspect counters, examining, even pricing the merchandise that attracted her. In the long years she had been an office-worker, she had spent many a luncheon hour in this fashion; she never grew tried of such visits, nor of acquainting herself with the new fads, novelties and latest styles in feminine apparel.

Just one hour after she had left it, she would be back at her desk, readjusting her paper cuffs, and re-pinning the sheet at her breast. At once the demands upon her would recommence:

“Miss Sturgis, while you were out, engravers ’phoned and said they can’t find that cut.”

“Miss Sturgis, Mr. Kipps wants to know how many copies of Garden and Kitchen we sold up to November first last.”

“Miss Sturgis, Miss Hilliker went home sick.”

“Miss Sturgis, will you sign my requisition for a box of clips?”

“Miss Sturgis, c’n I have a pencil?”

Thus it would continue for the rest of the day. The afternoon light would shine bleak and garish through the fireproofed windows with their meshed wire embedded in the glass, the dust would settle on desks and papers, the thundering presses on the lower floors would send fine vibrations through the building, typewriters would maintain a clicking droning, a buzz of small noises would harass the ear, there would be a continual flash of paper and of white hands at the folders’ tables, while pervading everything would be the thick sweet smell of ink emanating from stacks of new print matter fresh from the press-room.

Five o’clock always surprised Jeannette. Her work absorbed her; if she threw a hasty glance at the neat small mahogany-cased clock on her desk, it was to ascertain if there was time enough to complete one more task that day, or to begin preparations for a new one. The ringing gong that sounded “quitting time” invariably startled her into a blank sensation of discouragement. She would wish at that moment for another hour to finish the matter in hand,—just a little longer and she would have it out of the way! The commotion among the girls which instantly followed the gong never failed to annoy her. In less than five minutes,—save for Mrs. M’Ardle, little Miss Lacy, Miss Stenicke, and old man Harris,—her department would be empty. These assistants remained a little later to clean up the day’s work and prepare for the morrow’s. In another quarter of an hour, they too would begin to bang desk drawers shut, and prepare to depart. Presently Jeannette would be alone. She usually was the last to leave. It was then that a feeling of fatigue, a weariness of soul, a distaste of life would begin to assert themselves. Reaction from the racing events of morning and afternoon would close down upon her and of a sudden her work, her days, her whole life, would seem drab, colorless, profitless. What did it matter if a few more copies of the Dictionary were sold, what difference did it make if the new attack was a success, whether or not little Miss Lacy was inclined to be careless, or that Mr. Kipps had attempted to interfere with her again? Of what importance was the Mail Order Department of the Corey Publishing Company anyway? Or the concern itself? Mr. Corey had worked hard all his life and then had died and left it behind him! What good had it ever done him? This racketing building represented such trivial enterprise after all! It seemed ridiculously trifling.... She would get to her feet with a great sigh of apathy, disgust for her work and life rising strong within her. Frequently with a sweep of an impatient hand she would scoop the papers before her into the top drawer of her desk, or thrust them back into her “Incoming” basket. They could wait until the morrow; to-night they bored her; she wanted to get away; to shut them out of her mind! ... Ah, it was all so petty! No one would thank her for working after hours! She was sick to death of it!

She would adjust her hat with her usual care before the mirror in the dressing-room, tucking her hair neatly beneath its brim, don fur and gloves, and proceed to the elevator.

On the way out she might encounter Mr. Kipps or Mr. Allister.

“Good-evening, Miss Sturgis.”

“Good-evening, Mr. Allister.”

The street would be blue with gathering dusk, and crowded with dark hurrying figures homeward bound. Lights here and there streamed from office windows, dabs of brilliant yellow in the purple scene. Motor trucks and delivery wagons backed to the curb were being piled with crates and packages by hustling, calling men and boys. The tide of workers let loose from desk and counter set strongly in conflicting currents. Long lines of traffic filled the congested thoroughfare and waited for the signal to move forward. A dull clamor, a pulsing bass note, a sound of feet, voices, motor horns, a banging and bawling, a thumping and hubbub, clatter and rumble, throbbed persistently. There was a sense of hurry and dispatch in the air. No one had any time to waste; it was the hour of home-going, the end of the day’s toil, the feeding time of the great army of workers.

§ 7

Dinner had still to be prepared by the time Jeannette reached the apartment in Waverly Place. Beatrice, who was employed by a manufacturer of soaps and toilet waters a few blocks from where she lived, was usually in the kitchen when her friend arrived. Beatrice did the marketing at her lunch hour, or in going to and from her office. Mrs. Welch, who lived downstairs, obligingly took in packages and kept an eye on Mitzi, well qualified, however, to look after herself. The cat mysteriously disappeared during the day to present herself bright-eyed, hungry and affectionate the instant Jeannette’s or Beatrice’s steps sounded in the hall.

The dinners the two working women shared were usually simple. Very seldom they ate meat. Eggs in any form were popular and the evening meal,—nine times out of ten,—began with a canned soup served in cups. From the delicatessen on Sixth Avenue a variety of canned food was obtainable. Jeannette and Beatrice were particularly fond of canned chicken á la King, which had merely to be heated, seasoned and poured over toast. Sometimes they made their dinner of soup, a can of asparagus tips, tea and crullers. The asparagus tips made frequent appearances. Beatrice kept in the ice-box a little jar of mayonnaise, which she usually whipped together on Sundays. Macaroni salad was another prime favorite, and there were also tuna fish, creamed or made into a salad, and fish balls whenever they could be obtained.

Once in a while on a Sunday or on one of those rare occasions when company was expected Beatrice struggled with meat and potatoes for a three-course meal, but in these ventures she received small encouragement from Jeannette. The latter was forever proclaiming she “despised” to cook and was therefore averse to betraying any interest in plans for an elaborate meal; the odor of meat cooking in the house smelled the place up horribly, she declared.

Punctiliously, however, she performed her share of the work in cleaning up after dinner. She dried the dishes, gathered the small luncheon cloth by its four corners and gave it a quick shake out of a rear window, put away the silverware, and restored to the sideboard drawer the two fringed napkins in their red lacquer rings, rearranged the table and pushed back the chairs against the wall. Beatrice meanwhile would be busy fussing in the kitchen, washing the one or two pans she had used, the tea-pot and few dishes, feeding Mitzi the remnants of the can of soup and perhaps a bit of fish or a little fried liver. By half past seven dinner would be a thing of the past and the little home in order again.

Jeannette made it a practice to spend the ensuing hour or two in the seclusion of her own room. In many ways, this was the happiest time of the day for her. She was alone finally and could count upon being unhurried and undisturbed. First she made her bed with care: the undersheet must be stretched tight and tucked well under the mattress, there must be no wrinkles and the covers must be folded in loosely at the bottom; she affected a baby pillow which twice a week must be slipped into a fresh embroidered case. Five minutes followed with the carpet sweeper; the room was tidied,—everything put in its right place. When all was done, she would feel free to turn her attention to herself. If there was mending, she next disposed of it; distasteful though sewing had always been to her, she had grown dexterous with her needle. She spent fifteen minutes manicuring her nails, and an equal time brushing her hair and rubbing a tonic into her scalp. The gray was very thick over the right temple and Beatrice had urged her to have it “touched up” but Jeannette rather liked it as it was; she considered it added a distinguished touch. There were other intimate offices she performed at this hour with great thoroughness, her vigorousness increasing as time carried her into middle age. Twice a week, sometimes oftener, she took a hot bath about nine o’clock. Great preparations were attached to this performance, and she indulged herself in perfumed bath salts, perfumed soap, and delicately scented powder. When Mehitable brought home the “wash” on Friday nights, Jeannette devoted half-an-hour to running pink satin ribbons through her chemises and brassières. The ribbons she carefully steamed herself once a month and pressed with the electric iron in the kitchen. But those nights on which she did not bathe, when her room was in order and her toilette completed, she would don a kimona, and, with hair hanging in pig-tails down her back, her feet in Japanese wicker sandals, shuffle her way to the front room, with a book under her arm, to join Beatrice for perhaps an hour’s chat or reading before finally retiring. Neither she nor her companion ever went to the movies, and seldom to the theatre. Saturday afternoons Jeannette spent in tours of shrewd and calculated shopping, and on Sundays she went to Cohasset Beach to spend the day with Alice and the children.

CHAPTER II

§ 1

Jeannette, on her way to Cohasset Beach, let her Sunday newspaper drift indifferently into her lap, and turned her attention to the October landscape through the car window. The train was filled with Sunday visitors like herself, bound for friends and relatives in the suburbs. They would enjoy a hearty meal around a crowded table at one o’clock, would inspect the local country club for a view of the links or the golfers in their “sports” clothes, indulge, perhaps, in a motor trip to gain further aspects of the autumnal foliage, or, complaining of having over-eaten and demurring at any effort, establish themselves at the card table to while away the rest of the afternoon at bridge. At five o’clock the swarm that had filtered into the country all morning through the Pennsylvania Station would decide with one accord to return to the city, the cars would be jammed and every seat taken long before the westbound trains reached Cohasset Beach. It was always a noisy crowd with crying, tired babies wriggling in parents’ laps, golfers arguing about their scores and the adjustment of their bets, silly girls convulsed at one another’s confidences or lifting shrill pipes of mirth at the hoarse whispered comments from slouching male escorts, returning ball teams of youthful enthusiasts who banged each other over the head and vented their high spirits in rough jibes or horse-play.

Sunday travel was a bore, thought Jeannette in mild vexation. Even the outbound trains during the morning, which were never more than comfortably filled, stopped at every station along the line, no matter how insignificant. It took ten minutes longer to get to Cohasset Beach on Sundays than on any other day of the week; the express trains that left the city late in the afternoons from Monday to Saturday landed Roy home in nineteen minutes. It used to take a weary forty-five, Jeannette remembered, when the East River had first to be crossed by ferry and the rest of the way travelled in the old racketing, shabby, plush-seated, puffing steam trains from Long Island City.

She fell to musing as she idly watched the country flying past. She recalled the time when she and Martin had paid their first visit to Cohasset Beach as guests of the Herbert Gibbses and had gone picnicking on the shore at the Family Yacht Club. The Gibbses owned a handsome home on the Point to-day, and the little Yacht Club had been merged into the Cohasset Beach Yacht Club, which, since the fire that had laid it in ashy ruins, was now housed in a large, imposing edifice of brick and stone. The town itself,—then hardly more than a summer resort for “rich New Yorkers,” a few hundred houses scattered carelessly over some wooded hills,—had grown within the last dozen years into a flourishing community with banks, brick business blocks, and fireproof schools, with paved streets, and rows upon rows of white painted houses with green shutters and fan-shaped transoms above panelled colonial doorways. The woods were gone; the sycamores and gnarled old apple trees had given place to spindling elms set at orderly intervals on either side the carefully graded streets and to formal little gardens and close-cropped patches of lawn. The dilapidated wooden station had been supplanted by a substantial concrete affair, surrounded with cement pavements, and provided with comfortable, steam-heated waiting-rooms. The whirring electric trains swept on to other thriving villages further down the Island, and paused, coming or going, but a minute or two at the older town which had once been the terminal. There were now blocks and blocks of these trimly-built, neatly-equipped houses at Cohasset Beach, each with its garden, its curving cement walks and contiguous garage, and Messrs. Adolph Kuntz and Stephen Teschemacher had built stone mansions for themselves in the center of Cohasset Beach Park, to-day the “court” end of town.

Alice and Roy lived in humbler quarters: the old frame house Fritz Wiggens and his paralytic mother had once occupied. It was yellow and gabled, rusty and blistered, and spread itself out in ungainly fashion over a none-too-large bit of ground. It had, by no means, been a poor investment, although the building had needed a steady stream of repairs since the Beardsleys acquired it. Roy had been offered three times what he paid for it on account of its desirable location overlooking the waters of the Sound. Every now and then he and Alice discussed selling the place but invariably reached the same conclusion: Rents were prohibitive and no other house half as satisfactory could be purchased for the money without assuming a mortgage, an additional financial burden not to be considered; their problem was to devise ways of reducing expenses rather than increasing them.

§ 2

Jeannette had decided to walk to her sister’s house, but on the platform as she descended from the train she unexpectedly encountered Zeb Kline and his wife, awaiting the arrival of Sunday guests. Zeb had married Nick Birdsell’s daughter and gone into partnership with his father-in-law; Birdsell & Kline, General Contractors, had built most of the new houses in Cohasset Beach, and now Zeb had a fine stucco one of his own, and his wife drove about in her limousine and kept a chauffeur.

At the time Jeannette and Martin separated, the former had been aware that the sympathy of the community was with her genial, amusing, good-looking husband. The townsfolk considered she had treated him “shamefully”; only Edith French and the Doc were acquainted with the true facts of the case and had defended her, but the Doc and his wife had moved away within a year after Jeannette returned to work, and she had lost touch with them. Word reached her that they had settled in St. Louis, that the Doc had had his right hand amputated as the result of an infection from an operation, and that he was running a drug store there. Later Jeannette heard that Edith had left him and married an actor.

Suspecting a hostile attitude among these friends and acquaintances of her married years, Jeannette had kept herself carefully aloof from all of them when Roy and Alice selected Cohasset Beach for their home. She would avert her eyes when passing any of them on the street, or would bow with but a brief, unsmiling inclination of the head when forced to acknowledge recognition.

Now, as she came face to face with Zeb Kline and his wife, Zeb, a trifle flustered, lifted his cap and greeted her by name, and Jeannette, also taken unawares, responded with more cordiality than she felt. She was somewhat perturbed by the incident and was conscious of Kitty Birdsell Kline’s appraising eye following her as she made her way across the station platform.

It was this trifling occurrence that induced her to alter her intention and ride to Alice’s. Mrs. Kline might be admiring her,—her clothes and carriage,—or she might be sneering. In either case, the scrutiny was unwelcome, and, straightening her shoulders, Jeannette directed her steps toward one of the shabby, waiting Fords, and climbed in. She had no intention of letting the Klines sweep by her in their limousine while she trudged along the sidewalk.

Established in her taxi and rattling over the familiar route to her sister’s home, a pleasant thought of Zeb came to her. After all, he was the best of that rough and common group; he had always been polite to her, honest and straightforward; she remembered how kind he had been about the construction of the screens for the bungalow’s windows, hurrying their making and charging her practically no more than they had cost. She wondered if he had been to Philadelphia recently or had heard anything more of Martin. If she should chance to meet Zeb in the street some day, she debated whether or not she should ask him for news.

Baby Roy, clad in his Sunday corduroy “knickers” and a white shirt, which Jeannette knew well had been put upon him clean that morning, was sprawled on the cement steps of the Beardsleys’ home as her vehicle stopped before it. The cleanly appearance had departed from Baby Roy’s shirt, the trousers had become divorced from it, his collar was rumpled, and the bow tie, which his aunt suspected Etta’s hurried fingers had tied before church, was bedraggled and askew over one shoulder. He lay on his back, his head upon the hard stone, his fair hair in tousled confusion, gazing straight upward into the sky, his arms waving aimlessly above him. He made no move at the sound of the motor-car and only stirred when Jeannette reached the steps.

“Hello, Aunt Jan,” he drawled in his curious, indolent voice.

“Well, I declare,” said Jeannette, surveying him with puzzled amusement, “will you kindly tell me what you’re doing there? What are you looking at? What do you think you see?”

Baby Roy smiled foolishly, and with open mouth, twisted his jaw slowly from side to side.

“Aw,—I was just thinking,” he answered in awkward embarrassment. He got to his feet and put his arms around his aunt’s neck as she stooped to kiss him.

His cheek was soft and warm, and he smelled of dirt and sunburn.

“You’re a sight,” she told him; “your mother will be wild. Why don’t you try to keep yourself clean one day a week at least?”

“Ma won’t care,” the youngster observed, “and Et won’t say nothin’.”

“Pronounce your ‘g’s, Baby Roy,—say ‘noth-ing.’ Why will Etta say nothing?”

“’Cause she’s got her feller.”

“Who? That pimply-faced Eckles boy?”

The child nodded and then irrelevantly added:

“Nettie’s got appendicitis.”

“Good gracious!” exclaimed Jeannette. “Where did she get that?”

Further information was not forthcoming. The woman’s mind flew to the possible complications such a calamity would precipitate as she opened her bag and felt among its contents for the nickel package of lemon drops she had purchased at the Pennsylvania Station while waiting for her train. She shook three of the candies out into Baby Roy’s dirt-streaked palm, and was admonishing the recipient that they were to be eaten one by one, when there was a clatter of hard shoes on the porch and a boy of thirteen catapulted out of the house.

“Dibs on the funny paper!” he yelled.

Jeannette eyed him with assumed disapproval.

“There’s no necessity for such a racket, Frank; it’s Sunday, remember, and your sister’s sick and everything.”

She proceeded at once, however, to unfold her newspaper and to hand him the comic section.

“I brought you one out of the American, too.” Frank seized the papers and grunted his thanks.

“How is Nettie?” inquired his aunt.

She had to repeat her question for the boy’s attention was already absorbed by the colored pictures.

“Oh, she’s all right, I guess,” he answered carelessly.

“Is she really sick?”

“I dunno.”

Reproof was on Jeannette’s lips but she checked herself. Frank was her favorite among her sister’s children; he was the only one of them, she was at pains to declare frequently, who had any “gumption.” The rest were like their easy-going, amiable parents. Frank had some of her own energy; he was like her in many ways. It was clear he was destined to be the mainstay of his father’s and mother’s old age. He was sure to get on, make money, be successful no matter in what direction he turned his energies. A fine, clever boy, she considered him, with some “get-up-and-get” in his composition.

She left the two brothers seated side by side on the steps, poring over the “comics.” Their voices followed her as she entered the house.

“Go on, read it to me;—go on, read it to me. Don’t be a dirty stinker.”

“Aw, shut up, can’t yer? Wait till I get through first.”

Jeannette met Alice in the hallway and her first question was of the sick child. Alice kissed her with affection and hugged her warmly.

“I don’t think anything’s the matter,” she said reassuringly. “Nothing in the world but an old-fashioned stomach-ache; something she’s eaten,—that’s all. I thought it wiser to keep her in bed for to-day,—give her insides a good rest.”

“Why, Baby Roy said it was appendicitis!”

“Oh, nonsense! The child isn’t any more sick than I am!”

“Well, it gave me quite a turn.”

“Of course!” agreed Alice.

Jeannette eyed her sister a moment in suspicion. Allie’s vehement rejection of the idea that anything might be seriously the matter suggested Christian Science. Jeannette had heard Mrs. Eddy’s teachings discussed more or less frequently of late by her sister and brother-in-law. She suspected they both leaned toward that faith but lacked courage to come out openly and declare themselves. She wondered how far these idiotic principles had laid hold of them, and now, with a searching glance, she asked:

“Has error crept in?”

Alice blushed readily and laughed.

“I don’t know anything about that. If she’s any worse to-morrow, I’ll send for the doctor.

“I should hope so,” Jeannette approved warmly.

“Etta’s delighted with her dress,” Alice said with an abruptness that suggested a desire to change the subject. “You were a dear to help her out.”

“It was nothing at all,—less than five dollars. It seemed a shame not to get something that was becoming, and there’s real value in that garment.”

“Oh, yes, indeed. I could see that.”

Great thumping, banging and scraping were going on somewhere down below.

“Roy and Ralph are cleaning the furnace,” explained Alice in answer to her sister’s puzzled look. “It hasn’t been fired,—oh, I don’t think since last March.... Come upstairs and lay your things on Etta’s bed. I’ve got Nettie in mine; it’s so much pleasanter in our room.”

The two women mounted the creaking stairs. In the front room a little girl was propped up in bed with several pillows; she was cutting out pictures from magazines and the bed clothes and carpet were littered with scraps and slips of paper; a thin, plaid shawl was about her shoulders, fastened clumsily across her chest with a large safety-pin. She was not a particularly pretty child; her face was too long and too pale, but her hair, soft and rippling, had the warm brown color that had distinguished her mother’s, and her eyes were of the same hue.

“Look, Moth’, I put a new hat on this lady and she looks a lot nicer.” The child held up a wavering silhouette for inspection. “Oh, hello, Aunt Janny,” she cried as her aunt appeared in her mother’s wake; “was that you in the taxi?”

There was a note of real pleasure, Jeannette felt, in the little girl’s greeting, and she put some feeling into her kiss as she bent down to embrace her.

“I brought you some lemon drops, Nettie, but since you’re upset perhaps you’d better not have them.”

“Oh, I’m quite all right,” said the little girl brightly. “I’m not the least bit sick.”

Here was the cloven hoof of Christian Science again, thought her aunt darkly; the child had been coached, no doubt! It was a great pity if that rigmarole was going to be taken up by Alice and Roy to make them all miserable!

“Well, I think I wouldn’t eat candy till to-morrow,” advised Jeannette. “What I think you need is a good dose of castor-oil,” she added firmly with a glance at her sister. “But here,—I have something here, I know you’ll like much better,” she went on, searching in her bag. She brought to light a gold-colored, metal pencil about three inches long with a tiny ring at one end, and gave it to the child.

“Oh, thank you, Aunt Janny,—thank you awfully,” cried the invalid, immediately beginning to experiment with the cap which, in turning, shortened or lengthened the lead.

“Where’s Etta?”

“Gone to church,” Alice replied.

“Heavens! ... What for?” Jeannette turned inquiring eyes upon the girl’s mother. It was not that she lacked sympathy with any religious observance on her niece’s part, but church-going for Etta was unusual. The younger children were sent dutifully to Sunday school but the rest of the family were rather casual about attending divine services. Alice smiled significantly in answer to the query, elevated a shoulder, and indulged in a slight head-shake.

“I suppose that means a boy again,” Jeannette said, interpreting the look and gesture. “Doesn’t she see enough of them afternoons and evenings? I declare, Alice, I don’t know what you’re going to do with that girl. Yesterday afternoon, all she could talk about was the movies, and she even stopped me in front of a photographer’s show-case to ask me if I didn’t think a man in it was perfectly stunning! ... He was old enough to be her father!”

“Well, all the girls are like that nowadays.”

“It was decidedly different when we were that age.”

“Oh, indeed it was,” agreed Etta’s mother. “I was thinking only yesterday how we used——”

“You made a great mistake,” interrupted Jeannette, “in letting her bob her hair. It’s affected her whole character. She was never quite so frivolous before.”

“That was her father’s doing,” said Alice mildly.

“Oh, well,—he’d let her do anything she wanted! She has but to ask! ... What do you intend to do with her? Let her run round this way indefinitely? I’d make her take up sewing or cooking or learn some language.”

“Etta can sew quite nicely,” said her mother loyally, “and she’s a good cook. She wants to go to work,—you know that. She thinks you’d have no difficulty in getting her a position at the office.”

“Well, perhaps I would, and perhaps I wouldn’t. But I don’t approve of the idea! She’d much better go to Columbia or Hunter College.”

“But, Janny dear, we’ve been all over that, time and time again. That costs money. It would take several hundred a year to send Etta to college, and we haven’t got it. Roy thinks it’s much more important that Ralph should follow up his engineering at some university.”

Jeannette tapped her pursed lips with a meditative finger.

“When’s he ready?”

“This is his last year in High School.”

“It would be wiser to send him to business college.”

“Roy’s heart is set on Princeton, but if we can’t afford that,—and I don’t see how we possibly can!—then Columbia. He could commute, you know.”

Voices and the sound of feet on the porch announced arrivals. Jeannette drew aside a limp window curtain and gazed down at the front steps.

“It’s that pimply Eckles youth,” she announced.

“His dog has nine puppies and he’s promised one to me,” came from the bed.

“I hope Etta doesn’t ask him to stay to dinner,” Alice remarked, “it’ll make Kate furious.”

“No, he’s going.... I must take off my things.”

Etta running upstairs a moment or two later found her aunt before the mirror in her room, powdering her nose.

“Oh, darling!” The girl rushed at her and flung her arms about her enthusiastically.

“Careful,—careful, dearie,—I’ve just fixed myself.” Jeannette held Etta’s arms to the girl’s sides and implanted a brief kiss on her forehead. The enthusiasm of her niece was in nowise crushed.

“Didn’t we have fun yesterday, Aunt Jan? Oh, I just love going shopping with you! You know everything!”

Jeannette smiled complacently. She was a dear child, this! So responsive and appreciative!

Suddenly she glanced at her sharply, whipped a handkerchief from the bureau, and before unsuspecting Etta could guess what she was about, gave the girl’s lip a quick rub. There was a tell-tale smudge of red on the white linen. Jeannette held forth the evidence accusingly and her niece began to laugh, hanging her head like a little girl half her years.

“I tell you, Etta, it doesn’t become you! Your lips are red enough without putting any of that Jap paste on them! When you rouge them, it makes you look cheap and common.... I don’t care what the other girls do!”

She surveyed the girl critically: a handsome child with a lovely mop of dark brown hair that clung in rich clusters of natural curls about her neck and ears; her eyes were unusually large and of a deep, velvety duskiness, though there was a perpetual merry light in them, and her mouth, too, had a ready smile; her teeth were glistening white, but her complexion was bad, given to eruptions and blotches.

“And I wish,” continued Jeannette, “you’d stop eating candy and ice-cream sodas, and leave cake and pastry alone. Your skin would clear out in no time. It’s a shame a girl as pretty as you has to spoil her looks by injudicious eating.”

“Isn’t it the limit?” agreed Etta. Her face clouded and she went close to the mirror to study her reflection narrowly.

“I never knew it to fail!” she said in disgust. “Wednesday night, Marjorie Bowen’s giving a bridge party, and she’s invited a boy I’m just dying to meet! And there’s a blossom coming right here on my chin! I always break out if there’s anything special doing!”

“Well, I tell you!” exclaimed her aunt. “You wouldn’t have those things if you’d diet with a little care. Massaging won’t help a bit; you’ve got to remember to stop eating sweets.... Who’s the new beau you’re ‘dying to meet’?”

“Oh, he’s a high-roller,—lives down on the Point,—drives a Stutz and everything! The girls are all mad about him. He’s been at Manlius for the last two or three years, and now he’s freshman at Yale.... Name’s Herbert Gibbs!”

“Goodness gracious!” ejaculated her aunt.

“What’s the matter?”

“Well, ... nothing....”

“Oh, tell me please, Aunt Jan!—Please tell me!”

“Don’t be foolish! I knew his father, that’s all, and I once saw your ‘high-roller’ in his crib when he was less than a year old.... Isn’t he rather expressionless and flat-headed?”

“No; I think he’s perfectly stunning. He wears the best-looking clothes and he’s an awful sport!”

“Well, you’d never expect it, if you’d known his father,” her aunt said dryly.

There was an ascending tramp of feet on the stairs, and Roy with his eldest son appeared, dishevelled and sooty.

“That was a dirty job, all right,” declared Roy after he had greeted his sister-in-law and kissed her with the tips of his lips for fear of contaminating her. “I don’t think she’s been cleaned for years. We shovelled out a ton of soot. Ralph did all the hard work.”

He seemed a little ridiculous, a little pathetic to Jeannette, as he stood before her with his smirched and blackened face, and his tight, wan smile, the upper lip drawn taut across his row of even teeth. His stuck-up hair was still unruly, and had begun to recede at the temples and to thin on top; his face was lined with tiny wrinkles and he wore spectacles with bifocal lenses and metal rims,—an insignificant man, industrious, conscientious, weighed down with the cares and responsibilities of a large family. Life had dealt harshly with him, and somehow, remembering the boy with the whimsical smile who had once made such earnest love to herself in the flush of youth, Jeannette could not but regard the result as tragic. She was fond of Roy, nevertheless; he was always amiable, always good-tempered and cheerful, but she wondered at this moment as she took stock of him what sort of a man he would have become if she, and not Alice, had married him. Different, no doubt, for she would have pushed him into material success; she would not have been as easy-going with him as Alice; he had wanted to write; well, if she had been his wife, he would probably have turned out to be a very successful author for he had ability.

Roy’s oldest son, Ralph, was in many ways like his father. He had the same sweet, obliging nature and was even gentler. His voice had the quality of Baby Roy’s: indolent, drawling, dragging, and he spoke with a leisureliness that was often irritating. He was slight of build, narrow-chested and stoop-shouldered, a student by disposition, forever burrowing into a book or frowning over a magazine article. Jeannette would have considered this highly commendable had Ralph ever shown any evidence of having gleaned something from his reading, or displayed any knowledge as a result of it. What he read seemed to pass through his mind like water through a sieve.

She had brought down an advanced copy of the forthcoming issue of Corey’s Commentary for him, and he accepted this now, with an appreciative word.

She always made a point of bringing presents to her sister’s children whenever she visited them; she liked the reputation of never coming empty-handed. The gifts, themselves, might be trifling,—indeed she thought it becoming that they should be,—but she strove to make them sufficiently appropriate to indicate considerable thoughtfulness in their selection. She regarded herself as very generous where her nieces and nephews were concerned. Yesterday she had enabled Etta to buy a more expensive dress than was possible with the money her mother had given her, and last week she had sent Frank a fine sweater from a sale of boys’ sweaters she happened upon in a department store. Of all her sister’s children, Frank baffled her. He treated her casually, almost with indifference. While the other children swarmed about her with effusive gratitude and affection, whenever she gave them anything, Frank either grunted his thanks or failed to express them at all. She loved him by far the best, and was continually making him presents or defending him from criticism. Her partiality was so noticeable she was mildly teased about it by the rest of the family; but it drew no recognition from the boy. His aunt, eyeing him with great yearning in her heart, would often wonder how she could bribe him to put his stout, rough arms about her neck and kiss her once with warmth and tenderness. She was never able to stir him to the faintest betrayal of sentiment.

Her benevolence toward her sister’s family frequently went further than presents for the children. At Christmas-time she was munificent to them all, and she never forgot one of their birthdays. Once a year she took Nettie, Frank and Baby Roy to the Hippodrome, and on the occasional Saturdays that Alice or Etta came to the city, she always had them to lunch with her, accompanied them on their shopping trips, and contributed, here and there, to their small purchases. Not infrequently when she knew Alice was worrying unduly about some vexatious account, she would press a neatly folded bill into her hand. She liked the power that money gave her where they were concerned; she delighted in their gratitude and deference to her opinions; she was an important factor in their lives and she enjoyed the part.

§ 3

At one o’clock dinner was announced. There was little ceremony about the Beardsleys’ meals; the important business was to be fed. Kate, the cook and waitress,—a big-bosomed, wide-hipped Irish woman, with the strength of a horse and the disposition of a bear,—had scant regard for the preferences of any one member of the family she served. Her attention was concentrated upon her work; indeed, it required a considerable amount of clear-thinking and planning to dispatch it at all, and she brooked no interference. Roy, Alice, and the children were frankly afraid of her; even Jeannette admitted a wholesome respect.

“Oh, Kate’s in an awful tantrum!” the whisper would go around the house and the family would deport itself with due regard to Kate’s mood.

She piled the food on the table, rattled the bell and departed kitchenward, leaving the Beardsleys to assemble as promptly or as tardily as they chose. There never were but two courses to a meal: meat and dessert. Kate had no time to bother with soup or salad. Her cooking was good, however, and there were always great dishes of potatoes and other vegetables as well as a large plate of muffins or some other kind of hot bread. Jeannette firmly asserted that Kate’s meat pie with its brown crisp crust could not be surpassed in any kitchen.

To-day there were but seven at table as Nettie remained upstairs in bed. She would have crackers and milk later, her mother announced.

“Milk toast,” Jeannette suggested. But Alice shook her head and made a motion in the direction of the kitchen.

“She doesn’t like anyone fussing out there,” she whispered, “and I don’t like to ask her to do it herself; it’s extra work no matter how trivial. The Graham crackers will do just as well; Nettie’s quite fond of them.”

It was a cheerful scene, this gathering at the table of Roy, his wife, and their children. Tongues wagged constantly; there was happy laughter and loud talk, much clatter of china and clinking of silverware. Roy stood up to carve and he served generously; plates were passed from hand to hand around the table to Alice who sat opposite him and she added heaping spoonfuls of creamed cauliflower or string beans, and mashed potatoes. The pile of food set down in front of each seemed, by its quantity, unappetizing to Jeannette, but the others evidently did not share her feeling, for they cleaned their plates, while Frank and Baby Roy almost always asked for more. The remarks that flew about the board had small relevancy, but she found them interesting, liked to lean back in her chair, with wrists folded one across the other in her lap, and listen comfortably.

“Mr. Kuntz tells me he’s sold the Carleton place; the Hirshstines bought it,” Roy might observe.

“Oh, golly,—those kikes!”

“Frank, you mustn’t speak that way; Mrs. Hirshstine’s a nice woman, and Abe Hirshstine’s very public-spirited.”

“They may be Jews all right, but I wouldn’t consider them ‘kikes’; there’s a lot of difference.” Ralph’s drawl often had that irritating quality his aunt disliked.

“Well, she’s certainly a dumb-bell, if there ever was one.” Jeannette would infer this was of the daughter.

“That’s because Buddy Eckles’s after her!”

Etta with curling lip would dismiss this without comment.

“He likes to drive her Marmon,—that’s what he’s after.”

“She spoke about taking us all over to Long Beach, Saturday, and Buddy’s going to drive.”

“Hot dog!”

“You can’t go, smarty!”

“Why?—Why can’t I go?”

“’Cause you’ve got to go to the dentist’s.”

“Aw,—cusses!”

“Do you think I’d better have the storm windows put up to-morrow, Roy, when that man comes to fix the radiators?”

“I wouldn’t hurry about it; it isn’t November first yet.”

“I know, but it keeps the house so much warmer, and I was thinking about Nettie....”

“Ralph and I can do it when you need them.”

“We get Barthelmess at the Plaza Friday and Saturday!”

“Oh, c’n I go, Moth’?”

“We’ll see; perhaps your father will take you.”

“Do you let the children go to the movies much, Alice?”

“Depends on the picture. Barthelmess is always clean and good.”

“Friday I’ll be late coming home, and Saturday night I’m afraid I’ll have to go to the Civic Improvement meeting.”

“Bet I’m gypped!”

“Don’t worry, Baby Roy; I’ll let you go by yourself, Saturday afternoon, if you’re a good boy.”

“Pulitzer’s closing out his meat market; going to handle nothing but groceries from now on.”

“Well, I guess he’s made money. He’s a good citizen, all right. He subscribed two hundred and fifty for the district nurse.”

“Did you get on to my classy hair part, Aunt Jan? All the women-getters at school do their hair this way now.”

“Really, Frank! Your language ...! I don’t know where or how you pick up such phrases.”

“Don’t be too critical, Alice. He attaches no significance to them. You know what boys are.”

There was an endless stream of such talk, Roy and his wife frequently maintaining one conversation between ends of the table, while their children carried on another across it.

Kate crammed the soiled dishes on the oval, black, tin tray, piled them high, and grasping the tray with strong arms, bore it to the kitchen, kicking the swing door violently open as she passed through.

Dessert made its appearance, usually a deep apple pie, a chocolate pudding or a mound of flavored jelly in which slices of banana careened at various angles. Kate refused flatly to bother with ice-cream. Once in a while she condescended to make a layer cake.

During the meal it was customary for the telephone to ring several times. Instantly at each summons, Etta would be upon her feet and make a quick dash for the instrument. Long conversations would ensue in which Etta’s voice would drift down to the dining-room.

“Well, I didn’t.... Well, you tell him I didn’t.... Well, you tell him I didn’t say anything of the kind.... I never did.... He’s just crazy.... I never said anything of the kind.... Well, you tell him I didn’t....”

“Etta!” her father would call presently. The voice would continue unfalteringly, and Roy at intervals would repeat her name until finally the long-winded parley would be brought to an end.

By two o’clock on this particular day the meal was over, and there was a general breaking-up of the group. Alice went out into the kitchen to prepare Nettie’s tray. Frank vanished in pursuit of his own affairs, which usually took him to the house of “Chinee” Langlon, whose parents were wealthy and had lavished everything they could think of on their one son, including an elaborate wireless outfit. Buddy Eckles arrived a few minutes past the hour, planting himself on the front steps, and waited ostensibly for Etta to go walking with him. Jeannette had her own ideas as to where they actually went. She suspected they made their way without delay to the home of some girl friend, whose parents were absent or had lax ideas about the Sabbath, and there, having carefully pulled down the window-shades, out of deference to the possible prejudices of passers-by, they rolled back the rugs, turned on the Victrola, and with other couples as frivolous as themselves, danced until within a minute or two of the time when it was necessary to return to their respective families. Ralph disappeared up into his den,—a wretched, ill-lighted, cramped chamber he had built himself in the attic. He kept the door of this apartment carefully locked at all times, and when within by the light of a kerosene lamp, read what his aunt earnestly hoped was entirely edifying literature, and where, she was thoroughly persuaded, he indulged secretly in cigarettes. Baby Roy wandered amiably and uncomplainingly about, listening to his elders’ conversation, or took himself off into the scraggy garden where he hid in strange nooks and told himself stories in a droning voice which always ended in frightening him. Jeannette regarded him the strangest of her sister’s children; she frankly declared she did not understand him and thought Alice outrageously lenient where he was concerned.

§ 4

To-day’s visit was an unusually happy one for Jeannette. Nettie drifted off to sleep while her mother and aunt established themselves in shabby grass-rockers on the side-porch and had a long, comfortable talk. The day had turned unexpectedly warm and there was a reviving touch of dead summer in the air. In a neighbor’s garden, chrysanthemums and cosmos were still in bloom, and the brilliant colors made the Beardsleys’ own unkempt little yard appear gay and luxuriant. A mechanical piano tinkled pleasantly somewhere, and every now and then there came the vibrant hum of a passing motor-car. Kate marched past her mistress and her mistress’s sister presently, clad in sober town clothes and wearing one of Jeannette’s discarded hats which the giver thought, at the moment, became her nicely. Kate was off for the rest of the day, and Alice with Etta’s help would manage the cold supper for the family at half-past six. A stillness on this midafternoon settled about the house usually teeming exuberantly with life. Through an open window near at hand, the women on the porch could hear an occasional rustle of papers as Roy, prone upon the leather-covered couch in the living-room, read the Sunday news.

Alice drew a deep sigh of weary comfort.

“I ought to get at my sewing, I suppose, but I don’t like bringing it out on the porch Sunday; people can see you from the street.... It’s so pleasant out here, I hate to go in.”

“Sit awhile,” encouraged Jeannette. “You’re always worrying yourself about something, Alice.”

“I have to. Frank’s stockings have got to be darned or he can’t go to school to-morrow; Baby Roy’s cap is torn and I noticed his school suit needs cleaning.”

“You ought to make Etta do these things.”

“Etta does enough,” her mother defended her; “she’s only young once, you know, and Sunday ought to be as much of a holiday for her as it is for other young folks.... And there’re some letters I must write, one to Nettie’s teacher for Frank to take to school with him in the morning.... Mercy! there’s never any let-up to it. I’ve got to go over this month’s bills with Roy some time to-day and decide what we’re going to do about them. You know, I just won’t bother him about money matters when he comes home all tired out at night, and I have to wait until Sunday.”

“How are you off this month? Any worse than usual?”

“Roy’s premium falls due. I’ve got the money all right, but some of the monthly bills will have to wait.... You know, Jan, I’m sick to death of this ever-constant worry about money; I’ve had it all my life, ever since I was a little girl. I wish to goodness I could earn something on the side. When the children were little, I couldn’t spare the time, but that isn’t a consideration now. Etta could perfectly well take care of the house, and I could devote several hours a day to some kind of work that would bring in money. I thought I’d knit a few sweaters and see if I could induce some shop in the city to handle them; it would only cost me the wool. If I’d learned typing, I think I could get some copying to do. You know it makes me ashamed to realize how little I could earn if I was obliged to get out and seek my living. I’d be worth about ten dollars a week. That would be what they’d call my ‘economic value.’ ...”

“‘Economic value!’” cried Jeannette. “What do you mean? The mother of five children has an economic value of ten dollars a week! Why, Alice, you talk like a crazy woman!”

“I may be worth a great deal more than that to the nation, but that’s all I’d be worth to a business man.”

“The Government ought to give you an annual income the rest of your life for every child you bring into the world; that would represent your economic value!”

“Well, there’s no likelihood of their doing it,” laughed Alice. “I wish I had a definite way of earning money,—I mean a profession like a stenographer or a nurse. I’ve always claimed, Janny, that every woman, married or single, ought to learn a trade or profession. You have no idea how I envy you, sometimes. You’re independent, you’re beholden to no one, you’re utterly free of all these cares and responsibilities that harass me from morning to night.”

Jeannette shook her head emphatically.

“You don’t know, Alice,” she said. “If you envy me my life, I envy you a hundred times more. I envy you these very cares and responsibilities of which you complain; I envy you your husband and your children and all those things that go to make a home.... Oh, I think sometimes, I was a blithering fool to have left Martin!”

His name had not crossed her lips for months, and for a little time there was silence on the porch.

“Do you ever hear from him?” asked Alice in a lower key.

“No. I understand he’s in Philadelphia in the automobile business. You know as much about him as I do.”

“And he’s never married?”

“We’ve never been divorced.”

Again there was an interval of silence.

“Would you go back to him, Jan?”

Jeannette stared out into the warm sunshine, and her rocker ceased its slow movement.

“I’ve thought about it,” she admitted. “I’d like a home. I’m so tired of the office. There’s nothing to work for in the business any more. I’ve got as far as they’ll let me go; there’s no future for me.”

“Why don’t you write him?” Alice suggested, watching her sister’s serious face. “He may be as lonely as you are.”

“It’s fourteen years,” mused Jeannette. “We’ve both changed. He may be very different.”

“He may still be thinking of you and blaming himself for having treated you so unkindly.... Why don’t you write him and just say you’d be glad to know how he’s getting on?”

“I don’t know his address.”

“Well, that could be found out easily enough.”

There was a sound within, and Roy came stumbling out on the porch to stretch himself, luxuriously.

“Whew!” he said, enjoying a great yawn. “I nearly went to sleep in there.”

“Why didn’t you? A nap would have done you good.”

“I don’t like to miss a single minute of my one day at home. It’s too pleasant out here.”

Alice began to fidget, clearing her throat nervously.

“Do you feel like going over some bills with me, Roy?” she ventured with obvious reluctance.

“Sure,” he agreed good-naturedly.

He sat down on the steps, while his wife went indoors and presently returned with a sheaf of bills, a pad and pencil. She established herself next to him.

“Now you see, Roy,” she began, “in the first place, there’s the two hundred and forty that’s due on the fifth. I’ve got one hundred and fifty saved up, and that means I must take ninety out of next week’s salary. It’s going to leave me precious little, and there’s your commutation for next month that’s got to come out right away. I figure we owe about,—well, it’s not over six hundred; I’m not counting Frank’s teeth nor Gimbel’s; they can wait. But here’s the first of the month coming and Pulitzer, you know, won’t let you charge unless you pay up by the tenth. Now I was thinking....”

The voices went on murmuring, and Jeannette mused. Here it was again: the eternal war against want, the fight for existence, the battle for bread. There was never any end to it; it was perpetual, incessant, unending. In all the houses within the range of her vision, in all the trim, orderly, little dwellings that made up Cohasset Beach, in all the thousands and thousands of homes that dotted Long Island, in the millions that were scattered over the United States, and over the world, this struggle was going on. It was easy in some; it was bitter hard in others. Alice, who was among the most readily satisfied and uncomplaining of women, had protested against the everlasting drudgery, a moment ago! ... Well, she, Jeannette, had solved that particular problem for herself pretty much to her satisfaction. It was many years since she had had to worry about a bill; her income more than covered her expenses; she had saved and was going on saving; she had nearly enough money in the bank to buy another bond. In a few years she would have ten thousand dollars securely invested. Then, she would resign from the Corey Publishing Company,—they would pay her something, part salary, as long as she lived, the way they did Miss Holland,—and perhaps she would travel, or perhaps make her home with Roy and Alice. They would not want her particularly, but theirs might be the only place to which she could go; she knew their loyalty and affection would make them urge her to come to them.... And there was Frank! She would like to do something for that boy: pay his way through college or make him some kind of a handsome present that would render him eternally grateful to her. But she supposed he would be getting married as soon as he was grown up and would have no eyes nor time for anybody except the fluffy-haired doll he would select for a wife! ... Love was a funny thing! ... Her mind drifted to Martin,—Martin, with his youth, his charm, his good looks, his winning personality. Ah, he was a man of whom any woman might be proud! Well, she had been proud of him; she had always admired him; he had always had a particular appeal for her.... It was the selfsame thing that was agitating Roy and Alice to-day, that had caused her disagreement with Martin,—this struggle for money, for the means to pay bills, for the wherewithal to buy bread! ... Ah,—and they had had enough, more than enough, if Martin only had been reasonable! ... Undoubtedly he was very successful now; an agency for a motor-car in Philadelphia indicated success; he was, in all likelihood, a rich man. She wondered what would have happened to him and to her if she had stuck to him! ...

Her mind wandered into strange speculations. She had once viewed the streets of Philadelphia from a car window on her way to Washington. She thought of the city as blocks and blocks of small brick houses, with pointed roofs, standing close together, row after row, each with a little square bit of lawn beside brown stone front steps. She imagined herself and Martin in one of these; she was keeping house again, and she had a cook and perhaps a maid, and of course she would have an automobile, since Martin had the agency for one. Her life was full of friendships; she was able to dress beautifully; Martin’s associates admired her, thought her handsome, regal; she took a keen interest in her children’s schooling,—for, of course, there would be children,—a twelve-year-old Frank, and perhaps a younger Frank, as well, and one daughter, a girl different from either Etta or Nettie, a tall girl with a fine carriage, gracious, dignified, beautiful. How she would enjoy dressing her, and how proud Martin would be of his children, and of herself,—her poise and beauty, her fine clothes and the way she wore them, her graciousness to his friends and her capable management of his home....

“No man ever had a better wife than I have; no man was ever prouder of his wife and children; no man was ever more grateful. You’re a wonder, dear,—have always been a wonder! Other men envy me,—envy me your beauty and your goodness and your devotion. Everything I’ve amounted to in this life I owe to you; you’ve made me what I am; you’ve made our home what it is! My friends look at you and think how lucky I’ve been. I look back on all the hard years we’ve been together, on all the tough times we’ve had and somehow pulled through, and I know it’s to you, and not to me, the credit belongs. Oh, yes, it does! You’ve made my home for me, you’ve given me my children, you’ve taken the burden of everything on your shoulders, you’ve carried us both along and made our venture as man and wife, as father and mother, successful. I owe everything in the world to you, and to me you’re the loveliest and dearest woman in the world....”

It was Roy’s voice that she heard in the hush of the warm Sunday afternoon, and it blended with the queer thoughts of the woman who sat so still in her rocker as to be thought asleep.

“No—no, Roy,” Alice interrupted him. “We’ve done it together. Money doesn’t count with me,—really it doesn’t. Sometimes I protest a bit when I think of what the children have to do without, but there is nothing that can take the place of the love we all share. We’re a little group, a little clan that’s always clung together, and I’d rather be cold and hungry and see the children shabby and needy than have one less of them, or have discord amongst us. You and I have had our trials and our disagreements, but we’ve always loved each other and loved the children....”

Alice was crying now, softly crying with her head against her husband’s shoulder and his arm about her, and the hot prick of tears came to Jeannette’s eyes and a burning trickle ran down the side of her nose. She dropped her forehead into her hand and shielded her face with her palm.

“We’ll weather this difficulty as we’ve weathered many another,” Roy said consolingly. “I’ll go into the insurance company’s office to-morrow and fix it up with them; we’ll pay them half on the fifth, and I’m sure they’ll give me thirty days on the balance. Then you can settle what’s most pressing and give the others a little on account.... Why say,—we’ve faced worse times than this! Do you remember that Christmas when Ralph was only three and we’d been out trying to find the kids some cheap presents and I lost that ten-dollar bill out of my pocket? And do you remember when I was so rotten sick with pneumonia and the doctor thought I was going to get T.B.? And do you remember the time when Baby Roy was coming and you fell downstairs and broke your collar-bone? ... I tell you, Alice, we’ve lived, you and I! We haven’t had very much to do it on, but we’ve lived!”

“You’re such a comfort, Roy. You’re always so sweet about everything and you always put heart into me. You’re wonderful!”

“It’s you that are the wonder, Alice,—the most wonderful wife a man ever had!”

Their heads turned toward one another in mutual inclination and their lips met lovingly. They sat on for awhile in silence, Alice’s head once more against her husband’s shoulder, their hands linked, the man’s arm about his wife.

There came a faint sound from somewhere in the house.

“That’s Nettie,” Alice said, immediately arousing herself and getting to her feet. “I’ll go up. The child’s slept quite a while; it’s almost four o’clock.”

She crossed the porch with careful tread not to disturb her sister, and in another minute her voice and her daughter’s, alternately, floated down from an upstairs window. Roy produced a pipe from his coat pocket, and proceeded to empty, fill and light it with attentive deliberation. When he had it briskly going, he rose and leisurely crossed the strip of lawn to his neighbor’s yard, vaulted the low wire fence, and was lost in a moment beyond the cosmos and chrysanthemums.

Jeannette remained as she was, head in hand, thinking, thinking. The tears had dried upon her face, her eyes were staring, and there was an empty hunger in her heart that she recognized at last had been there for a long, long time.

CHAPTER III

§ 1

“Etta! Is that you?”

“Yes,—it’s me, Aunt Jan.”

“Say ‘it’s I,’ dear. What brings you to the city, Sunday?”

“I stayed in town last night. There was a dance at Marjorie Bowen’s cousin’s house and Moth’ said I could go. We had a perfectly divine time! Her aunt chaperoned us and I slept with Marj. I thought maybe you’d be going down to Cohasset Beach this morning, and we’d go together. So I got up, left the girls in bed, had my breakfast, and took a ’bus to come down to see you. I want to talk to you about something.”

“But, dear,—I wasn’t going to the country to-day. I promised an old friend of mine who lives at the Navy Yard in Brooklyn, I’d go to see her this afternoon.”

Etta’s face fell and she frowned disconsolately at the carpet. Her aunt suspected something was troubling her.

“Couldn’t you tell me what’s on your mind, now?”

“Oh, it wasn’t anything particular; I wanted to ask your advice, and I thought we’d have a talk as we went down in the train.”

A bright light suddenly came into the girl’s face.

“Is it Miss Holland you’re going to see, Aunt Janny? Won’t you let me go with you? Remember I met her that day she was here to lunch? She’s perfectly sweet! I’d just love to visit the Navy Yard!”

“Well, I don’t think you’ll find many ensigns or lieutenants hanging about on Sunday.”

“Oh, but it would be lots of fun, just the same! I’ll ‘phone Moth’ I’m with you and take a late train this aft! Please say yes, Aunt Janny,—please say yes!”

The girl was jumping up and down in eagerness.

“Well-l,” her aunt said with an amused but doubtful smile, “I don’t see what you’d get out of it, particularly.”

“I’d just love the trip, and I’d like being with you, Aunt Janny,—really I would!”

Jeannette narrowed her lids and eyed her skeptically. She was pleased, nevertheless. Her niece’s excessive ebullition and high spirits never failed to divert her; she liked the child’s company; the girl had a great respect for her worldly judgment, much more than she had for her mother’s or father’s, and the older woman found it an engaging business to expound her theories of life and her views of affairs to the younger one.

“I’m not going until after lunch,” she said, still with a vague hesitancy in her manner.

“I don’t mind waiting a bit.”

“Can you amuse yourself until noon? I have some office work to do that will take me about an hour. Miss Alexander’s gone to church but she’ll be back directly.”

“Could I make some egg muffins? We could have ’em for lunch, an’ they’re awfully nice and I’m really good at them.”

Jeannette noted the child’s palpitant eagerness again with mild amusement.

“I think that would be lovely,” she consented, her fine eyes twinkling. “But don’t get things out there in a mess; Miss Alexander won’t like it if she comes home and finds everything upset.”

“I’ll be ever and ever so careful,” agreed Etta, already skipping toward the kitchen.

Jeannette took herself back to the cold front room, seldom used by either herself or Beatrice, and brought her thoughts once more to the construction of the half-finished circular letter which must be ready for the composing room early Monday morning.

She heard Beatrice come in presently, and an hour later, as she was completing the last revision of her work, Etta appeared breathlessly to announce lunch.

The egg muffins were excellent and received enthusiastic praise. Jeannette ate them with the heated canned tamales, and sipped her tea, one eye on the clock, for she was anxious to make an early start if Etta was to catch, at any seemly hour, a train back to Cohasset Beach.

It was after two before she and her niece found themselves seated in the thundering subway.

“Well, now, tell me your troubles, my dear,” Jeannette began; “I want to hear all about them.”

But Etta had to be coaxed before she would become communicative.

“Oh, it’s this!” she finally burst out, striking her skirt with disdainful fingers. “It’s my clothes, Aunt Jan! I was horribly ashamed last night. There wasn’t a girl there at Marjorie’s cousin’s party who wasn’t a lot better dressed than I! I felt awful and was so embarrassed! One of the girls’ older sister was there and I saw her taking an inventory of everything I had on! I just wanted to sink through the floor! Moth’ does everything she possibly can to see that I look decent, and I know better than anyone else what she does without so that I can have things! But I don’t want that! I don’t want Moth’ and Dad denying themselves on my account. I want to be able to take care of myself and buy my own clothes, earn my own living and be independent! ... Aunt Jan, won’t you get me a job at your office? Won’t you back me up with Moth’ and Dad, and urge them to let me go to work? I don’t want to stay at home and just help Moth’ here and there with the housework and do nothing else but go to the movies and dance jazz! They call me a ‘flapper,’ and I suppose I am one,—but what else is there for me to be? I hate it, Aunt Jan,—I hate being a flapper! I want to be something different and better; I want to make my own way in the world and not be obliged to stick round home until a man with enough money comes along and asks me to marry!”

It was the old familiar cry, the cry of youth calling for self-expression, the cry of budding life eager for experience, the cry of young womanhood demanding independence, emancipation.

The words rang familiarly in the older woman’s ears, and she smiled sadly with a sorry head-shake.

“Why, what’s the matter, Aunt Jan?” asked the girl after a troubled scrutiny of her companion’s face. “Don’t you think I have a right to earn my own living if I want to?” She renewed her arguments with characteristic vehemence. There was nothing new in them for Jeannette; she had voiced them all herself twenty-five years ago. A memory of her patient, hard-working little mother came to her, and she saw her once again with the comforter over her knees, the knitted red shawl pinned across her shoulders, thin of hair, with trembling pendent cheeks, bending over the canvas-covered ledger, figuring—figuring—figuring. And she saw herself, the impatient eighteen-year-old, striking her faded velvet dress with angry fingers, protesting against the humiliation her shabby attire occasioned her, asking to be allowed to work, to earn the money that would permit her to dress as other girls dressed, and be her own mistress, self-supporting. How well, she, Jeannette, could now sympathize with that earnest, tearful, little mother!

She looked at Etta and, in her mind, saw her anxiously taking dictation from some frowning business man, saw her white flying fingers busy at some switch-board disentangling telephone cords, pictured her perched on a tall stool, bending over a great tome, making careful entries, saw her folding circulars, writing cards, filing letters, giving her youth, her eagerness and beauty to the grim treadmill of business life, and her heart filled with pain.

“... and there’s no reason on earth,” Etta was saying, “why I shouldn’t help out at home. Dad and Moth’ have given all their lives to us children; they’ve denied themselves and denied themselves just so we can have clothes for our backs, enough to eat and go to school! It isn’t fair. It’s time I helped. I could go to business college, take a course, and in three months, I could learn to be a stenographer and earn fifteen or twenty dollars a week....”

“Hush, child,—hush! You don’t know what you’re talking about!” Jeannette broke in, suddenly stirred to speech. “I threw away my life, talking just that kind of nonsense. To learn to earn her own living is a dangerous thing for a young girl.”

“Why, how do you mean, Aunt Jan?”

“Its effect is poison; it’s like a drug, a disease! I’ve paid bitterly for my financial independence. I sacrificed everything that was precious to me because I wanted to be self-supporting. Etta dear, life is a hard game for women at best, but waiting within the shelter of her own home for the man she’ll some day come to love and who will love her is the best and wisest course for a girl to follow.”

“But I hate the kind of life I’m living! There’s nothing ahead of me but marriage, unless I go to work! You wouldn’t want me to marry just because I was bored at home,—and I’ve known lots of girls to do that! I never meet any attractive men,—only High School kids and rah-rah boys out of college. Wouldn’t I have a much better chance to meet a finer class of young men around business offices,—I mean serious-minded, ambitious young men? It seems to me I’d have much more opportunity to meet a man I’d admire, and who might want me to marry him if I went to work than I ever will waiting stupidly at home.”

“It doesn’t make any difference where you meet him, whether it is in business or at a High School dance,” Jeannette answered. “He’s bound to find you, and you him.... I hate to see you go to work. You pay a fearful penalty in doing so. It makes you regard marriage lightly, and prejudices you against having children——”

“Oh, I shall want children!” exclaimed Etta, promptly. She proceeded to outline just what were her requirements in a husband, and to give her views on the subject of having children. Her aunt was somewhat disconcerted to discover that she had these matters, as far as they concerned herself, entirely settled in her own mind. “Oh, yes, indeed,” Etta repeated, “I shall want children. Perhaps not such a lot of them as Moth’ and Dad have. They would have had a much easier time of it, if they’d had only one or two. Instead of always being poor and having to struggle, they could have lived in considerable comfort, and now there would be no question about their being able to send me to Bryn Mawr or Vassar. I think two children are enough for any couple. Now, my idea, Aunt Janny,——”

“Oh, for Heaven’s sakes, Etta!” Jeannette interrupted with impatience; “you don’t know what you’re talking about! What does your education or Ralph’s education amount to in comparison with the lives of Frank, Nettie, and Baby Roy? You’ll have a great deal more worth-while education pounded into you by having brothers and sisters and by having to help your mother take care of them, than you would ever get at Bryn Mawr. More than that, just living in the same house with them, being brought up with them and learning to deny yourself, now and then, for their sake has taught you unselfishness, forbearance that will make you a far better wife and mother than ten years’ of college education! ... Your father and mother with you children about them, with the hard problems you present, with the ever-pressing question of ways and means before them, with the solving of these problems,—for there is always a solution,—are among the most enviable people in the world. There was a time when I used to feel sorry for your mother, but now I look at her with only admiration and jealousy. You think of her as poor! Well, I think of her as rich! And I attribute much of the happiness she has had out of life to the fact that she never went into business.... Stay out of it, Etta my dear, whatever you do! It’s an unnatural environment for a girl, and in it her mind and soul as surely become contaminated as if she deliberately went to live in a smallpox camp.... Look at me, my dear! I’ve given twenty years of my life to business and what have I to show for it? Nothing but a very lonely and selfish old age!”

“Oh, Aunt Jan!” cried the girl, shocked into protesting. “How can you say such things! Why I think you’re one of the handsomest, happiest, most enviable, smartest-dressed women in the world!”

Jeannette laughed.

“Well, I didn’t mean to deliver a ‘curtain’ lecture! I just hated the thought of your following in my footsteps. It makes me actually shudder even to think of it. But I didn’t mean to get started the way I did——

“Here,” she suddenly cried, gathering her things together and hurriedly getting to her feet, “this is the Bridge! We have to get off here and change cars.”

§ 2

The house just inside the high iron fence of the Navy Yard in which Commander Jerome Sedgwick lived was a three-story, square, dirty cream-painted cement affair, which bore his name in a small, neat sign on the third step of the front stairs. Across the street from it, children racketed upon a city play-ground, and in its rear some green-painted hot-houses leaned haphazardly against one another, their backs turned upon a quadrangle where several orderly tennis courts were located. Jeannette had visited Miss Holland here many times, and one summer a few years ago, had spent her two weeks’ vacation keeping her old friend company, while the nephew, Jerry, was enjoying a month’s leave with his family, fishing among the Maine lakes.

A little girl of five, just tall enough to reach the knob, opened the door a few inches and stared up unsmilingly at the visitors.

“How do you do, Sarah?” said Jeannette, recognizing the child. “Is your mama at home?”

Sarah continued to stare stolidly a moment, then turned and disappeared, leaving the door hardly more than ajar. Jeannette and Etta could hear the sound of her shrill, piping voice, and her small running feet within.

Mrs. Sedgwick came rustling to greet the callers promptly, and in her wake limped Miss Holland.

“Oh, you dear!” exclaimed the latter, catching sight of Jeannette. “I’m so glad you came; I’ve been hungering for a sight of you for weeks.” She kissed her friend warmly on both cheeks. Etta was presented.

“The child begged to be allowed to come,” explained her aunt. “She wanted a glimpse of the Yard.”

“Why, certainly,” exclaimed Mrs. Sedgwick cordially. “I’m delighted you brought her. Jerry unfortunately isn’t home but I have to take Sarah and Junior out shortly, and I’ll be charmed to show your niece about, and leave you two to gossip by yourselves.”

Miss Holland, her thin, knuckly, white hand on Jeannette’s forearm, drew her into the sitting-room.

“Take off your things down here, my dear; I can’t climb stairs very well on account of my knees, and no one’s coming in.”

“How is your rheumatism?” inquired Jeannette.

“’Bout the same; it keeps me rather helpless, and the doctor is actually starving me to death. What with the things he says I can’t eat and the things I don’t like, my menus are rather limited.”

The two women settled themselves before the small, glowing coal fire in an old-fashioned grate, and began talking in low tones. Mrs. Sedgwick excused herself to make the children ready to go out, while Etta stood at the window, gazing with absorbed interest at any evidence of Navy life that came within the range of her vision.

“’Xcuse me, Miss Holland,” she interrupted presently with her usual breathlessness, “do you happen to know, or did you ever hear Commander Sedgwick mention a young ensign named White?”

Miss Holland looked doubtful.

“My friend, Marjorie Bowen, knew him, or knew his sister, I think, while he was at Annapolis.”

“Well, I’m afraid ...” began Miss Holland.

Etta proceeded hastily to another observation.

“There was a destroyer in Cohasset Bay last summer,—anchored right off the Yacht Club,—and I saw two of the officers on shore one day.... I don’t know what their names were, of course, but during the war I knew several of the boys in the reserves. Asa Pulitzer was a boatswain’s mate; ... I think that’s what he was.”

Jeannette turned an indulgent smile upon Miss Holland.

“Asa Pulitzer is the local grocer’s son.”

“Well, I don’t care if he is!” protested Etta. “He made good——”

Mrs. Sedgwick rustled downstairs at this moment, making a timely entrance. She carried Etta off, with assurance of returning in time for tea.

“Well-l,” said Jeannette comfortably, as the pleasant hour of companionship and confidences began. “You don’t look as if you’d been ill!”

“Not ill exactly; it’s this wretched rheumatism that will not get better.”

Miss Holland’s tone was not complaining; indeed she always spoke with remarkable placidity. Jeannette regarded her with all her old admiration. There was an unusual aristocratic quality about Miss Holland that never failed to stir her. She was white-haired, now, fragile and thin looking, and there was an uncertainty about her movements, but she still bore herself with distinction,—a gentlewoman to her finger-tips. Even more than the air of gentility that surrounded her, Jeannette esteemed the shrewd brain, nimble wit and judgment of this woman. It seemed a sad and sorry thing to her that so splendid a personality, so fine an intellect should have had so little opportunity for self-expression in the world, and that at sixty, Miss Holland should be no more than what she seemed: an old maid, growing yearly more and more crippled, passing what days remained to her with her nephew and her nephew’s family, somewhat of a problem, somewhat in the way! Of course they loved her; Jeannette knew that Commander Sedgwick was devoted to his aunt and treated her with as much respect and affection as ever son did his mother, but, after all, on the brink of old age, Miss Holland’s course was run, and how little she had to show for all her years of toil and faithfulness! She had spent her life at an underling’s desk and given her wisdom and her strength to a business that had paid her barely enough to support herself and make it possible for her to give her nephew his profession!

“Miss Holland,” Jeannette asked impulsively, “what did the Corey Company pay you towards the end of your employment there?”

“Fifty dollars a week for the last five years I was with them.”

“And altogether, you were there?”

“Twenty-five years.... Why do you ask?”

“I was thinking how little they appreciated you.”

“Mr. Kipps told me,” Miss Holland said with a reminiscent smile, “that it would never do to pay women employees more than fifty a week; they wouldn’t know what to do with the money.”

“He didn’t!”

“Oh, yes! He claimed it would demoralize them. He used to say they would be sure to throw it away on ‘fripperies.’ ‘Fripperies,’ you remember, was a great word of his.”

“It still is!”

“Mr. Kipps’ attitude is typical, I think, of the average employer of women. This is a man-made world, as perhaps you’ve noticed, my dear. Did you ever stop to consider the injustice to which working women are subjected? Do you realize there are about twelve million working women on pay-rolls in the United States, that twenty dollars a week is a very high wage for any one of them to receive, and six million of them, or half of the entire number, earn between ten and twelve a week? ... I happen to have the statistics issued by the woman’s bureau of the Department of Labor.”

Miss Holland pushed herself up erect from her chair, and her face showed the pain the effort cost her.

“Can’t I get it for you?” offered Jeannette hastily.

“No—no; thanks very much; it’s right here. I can put my hand on it in just a minute.” From a desk near at hand she produced a government report.

“I came across this the other day, and I saved it because it proves what I have always felt about the unfairness with which women are treated in business. They may perform equal work with men but very few of them are paid as well. The average annual earning power of the male industrial worker now is at the rate of a thousand dollars a year; that of the woman industrial worker five to six hundred. Among office workers the disparity is much greater. When I was getting fifty dollars a week as Mr. Kipps’ chief assistant, there was a youth helping me who was being paid sixty.”

“I know,” agreed Jeannette. “When Tommy Livingston followed me as Mr. Corey’s secretary, he did not do the work half as competently as I had done,—Mr. Corey often told me so,—and yet he was paid more at the very start, and asked for and received one raise after another, until Mr. Corey was paying him nearly twice what he formerly had paid me; but when I went back to work after I left Martin, Mr. Corey started me in again at the old salary of thirty-five, and never suggested a higher rate. Walt Chase was getting eighty-five dollars weekly as head of the Mail Order Department, and when I took charge, I received only forty. Although I have doubled the amount of business the Corey Publishing Company does by mail, I am to-day being paid but fifty a week. Mr. Allister told me when I asked for my last raise, that it was the last he would ever give me.”

“Almost all employers underpay their women workers,” affirmed Miss Holland. “In general women are receiving to-day from a half to two-thirds what men are who do identically the same kind of work. I was discussing this question once with Mr. Kipps, and he defended himself by stating that the majority of girls who fill office positions only work for ‘pin money.’ ... ‘Pin money?’ What is ‘pin money’? Dollars and cents, I take it, with which to buy clothes and some amusement. Don’t men need ‘pin money,’ too? Doesn’t everyone? When the Corey Publishing Company employs a young man,—a High School or College graduate,—what he is paid per week is never spoken of as ‘pin money,’ yet he spends it for exactly the same things as girls do.... I’ve often wondered if Mr. Kipps considered the salaries he paid you and me, Mrs. O’Brien, and Miss Travers, Miss Whaley, Miss Foster, Miss Bixby, Miss Kate Smith, old Mrs. Jewitt, Mrs. M’Ardle, and Miss Stenicke as ‘pin money!’ Most of those women not only supported themselves but their old mothers and fathers, their younger brothers and sisters or some helpless relative. Mrs. O’Brien had two daughters she kept at Ladycliff for nine years; Miss Travers has a bed-ridden sister; Miss Whaley, her mother; Mrs. Jewitt, a tubercular husband; and Kate Smith is putting her young brother through dental college——”

“Yes,” interrupted Jeannette, “Mrs. M’Ardle has two children of her own she is taking care of, and one of her sister’s, and she’s getting only forty dollars a week.”

“How does she do it!” exclaimed Miss Holland.

“I’m sure I don’t know.... Beatrice Alexander has been sending thirty dollars a month to her helpless old aunt in Albany for the past fifteen years.”

“That’s where the ‘pin money’ goes!” declared Miss Holland with a note of scorn in her voice. “These silent, uncomplaining, hard-working women who give their lives to the grind of business! I feel keenly the rank injustice that is being done them!”

There was a moment’s silence, and Miss Holland continued:

“Mr. Kipps’ great argument was always that girls who came seeking employment did so with the intention of working only a year or two, and then getting married. He argued that a concern could not regard these women as permanent employees to be trained to fill important positions; they could not be depended upon to remain with a business and grow up with it——”

“I must say,” broke in Jeannette with fine sarcasm, “that great inducements are offered them to do so! At the end of twenty and twenty-five years’ faithful and efficient work in such positions as you filled and as I fill to-day, they are paid fifty dollars a week!”

“I answered him,” Miss Holland went on, after an appreciative nod, “that neither could the men he employed be considered as fixtures. I reminded him of Van Alstyne, Max Oppenheim, Humphrey Stubbs, Walt Chase, Tommy Livingston and Francis Holm. There are a hundred others. How many boys starting in to business, do you suppose, stick for the balance of their lives with the concern for which they first began to work?”

“Not many.”

“Few indeed! It’s to keep and hold these same boys and young men that the large corporations to-day are offering to sell them stock at advantageous rates.”

“Of course, it is the girls living at home,” observed Jeannette, “partially supported by their fathers and mothers or some relative, willing to work for small salaries to buy themselves a few extra clothes and a measure of amusement, that are keeping down the salaries paid to women entirely dependent on their earnings.”

“During the war,” observed Miss Holland, “a hundred thousand women were employed by the railroads to perform the work which the men formerly did before they went into the army. Women cleaned locomotives, tended stock-rooms of repair shops, sold tickets, took charge of signal stations, worked as carpenters, machinists, and electricians; women took the places of men in the steel mills, in the munition plants, in the foundries and even in coal mines. The National War Labor Board, headed by William H. Taft, undertook to protect the women workers, and laid down the principle that women doing the work formerly performed by men should receive the same pay. In other words, the pay was to be fixed by the job and not by the sex of the employee. Employers throughout the nation followed the ruling of the Labor Board.”

“But that was a war-time measure,” said Jeannette, “and we all did things, then, that were altruistic and patriotic.”

“If women had the physical strength of men,” Miss Holland asserted, “and could defend their principles by force, there would be a speedy end of injustices. Why do male waiters in our restaurants get higher wages than waitresses? Certainly they don’t work any harder, or give better service. Suppose all the women workers in New York City formed unions, and struck for what they decided adequate pay, a uniform scale of salaries, and could use the same methods that men would use in preventing women who had not joined the ranks from taking their places! Think what would happen! The work in every office, every bank, every corporation in this city would come promptly to a standstill; the strike would last forty-eight, seventy-two hours, and then the demands of the women would be conceded.... You want to remember one thing, my dear: women never banded together since history began, and asked anything that was unfair or unjust!”

“I was having a very interesting talk with my niece as we were coming here,” broke in Jeannette; “Etta wants to go to work, wants a position as stenographer in some office, not only to earn extra money with which to help out at home, but to acquire an interest in life that will fill her days. There are a hundred thousand young girls like her in this city to-day. Consider what effect a job would have on an immature character like Etta’s! I’ve been all through the bitter mill, and I speak from experience. Financial independence is a dangerous thing for such young girls. It makes them regard marriage with indifference. There is many a girl who has declined to marry a young man to whom she undoubtedly would have made a good wife merely because his income, which would have to do for both of them, was no more, or perhaps only a little more, than what she was earning herself.”

Jeannette’s lips closed firmly a moment and she stared out of the window at the bleak prospect of the Yard’s quadrangle bordered by closed and silent brick warehouses.

“But suppose the girl office-worker decides to give matrimony a trial,” she continued, “as I did, her mind has been distorted by having known what it means to be financially her own mistress. Instead of bringing to her job of wifehood the resolute determination to make a success of it, from the first she is critical, and on the constant lookout for hardships in her new life, comparing them with the freedom of her old. I should have made Martin a much better wife, Miss Holland, if I had brought to my problem of being his partner the passionate determination that was mine in wanting to make good as Mr. Corey’s secretary. I always hugged to myself the thought that if the time came when I wouldn’t like Martin any more or like being a wife, I could go back to my job,—and that is exactly what this thought led me to do. Making any marriage a success is the hardest work I know about both for men and women, and there should be no avenue of easy escape from it for either of them. I’d never have left Martin, I’d have endured his unkindness and lack of consideration,—or at least what seemed his unkindness and lack of consideration to me then,—if there hadn’t been an easy way out for me, and we’d have gone on together and made a home for ourselves and our children. All I had to do was to walk out of Martin’s house and go back to my job. That’s what every wife who has once been a self-supporting wage-earner says to herself from the day she marries. She doesn’t even have the trouble of getting a divorce to deter her.... It’s wrong, I tell you, Miss Holland! It’s all wrong! The more I live, the more I am convinced that women have no place in business. No,—please let me finish,” she said earnestly as her friend started to interrupt. “There’s one other angle to this question: the girl who has once tasted independence but who decides to give matrimony a trial may go so far as to consent to be a wife, but she stops at becoming a mother! She dreads children. And why? Because she realizes that once a baby is at her breast, she’s bound hand and foot to her husband and her home. She can’t leave her child with the nonchalance she can her husband. In the homes of women who have achieved economic independence before they marry, you will find few children, and in the majority of cases, none at all. I know a score of girls, at one time in office jobs, who quit them to be married, but have drawn the line at babies.

“It seems to me this is of national significance. The country is being deprived of homes and children because of this great invasion of women into business during the last twenty or thirty years. When I went to work twenty-four years ago, it was the exception for nice girls to go into offices. I remember how my mother fretted over my wanting to do it and how bitterly she opposed me. Now, every girl, rich or poor, desires a year or two of business life. Women are devised by Nature to be home-builders and mothers. Anything tending to deflect them from fulfilling their destiny is contrary to Nature and is doomed to failure or to have bound up in it its own punishment. When women compete with men in fields in which they do not belong, they are acting against Nature, and as surely as one gets hurt by leaning too far out of a window, so surely do such women pay a penalty for their deeds. Man was condemned in Genesis to ‘work by the sweat of his brow’; there is nothing said about women having to work; she was given her own punishment. And here is an obvious fact, Miss Holland: No man likes to work under a woman boss. When I took charge of the Mail Order Department, three men who had been with Walt Chase resigned rather than work under me. I didn’t blame them. It was as repugnant to me to give them orders as it was for them to take them.

“Now that is a biological obstruction in the way of woman’s progress in business that you cannot get away from, and which you cannot lay to man’s door. Men don’t like to work for women, and women don’t like to have men assistants, and since man is intended by God and Nature to be the worker, and woman is ordained to bear children, I say again that women have no place in business.”

“But Miss Sturgis, Miss Sturgis!” cried Miss Holland. “Do you mean to tell me that women have not the right to earn their own living? Do you mean to tell me that you and I and all the women in the world must always look to some man to support us? Do you mean to tell me that widows with children to take care of, and women whose husbands are incapacitated or who desert them or who turn out to be drunkards or brutes, and women who are adrift in the world, and perhaps have never married because they’ve never been wooed, haven’t a right to turn their brains to account and earn their livelihoods?”

“Well, it might be a good plan to limit the women workers to just the classes you mention,” Jeannette answered. “Certainly I won’t concede to you that every eighteen-year-old flapper like my niece or your sweet young college-graduate has the right to plunge into business and unfit herself for wifehood and motherhood, driving at the same time some needy soul of her own sex out of employment. Comeliness, a fair complexion have much to do with securing a job for a woman and with helping her to retain it. The plain girl or, more particularly, the middle-aged woman with two children to support, whose beauty has long since deserted her, has small chance against the pink-skinned eighteen-year-old with the bobbed hair and the roguish eye who may only have one-tenth of her ability. No employer ever hires a good-looking young man in preference to a homely one whose years of experience and ability are known. The more faded a woman becomes, the less she is wanted about an office. Looks play an important part in the rôle of the business woman. She should be judged, I think, not by her appeal to the eye, but by her industry. This is one more reason why I believe women under thirty should be debarred from going to work. If women workers were limited, confined to thousands, let us say, instead of millions, then those privileged to work could earn a proper living wage, and dictate the terms under which they should be employed. There are certain professions and callings to which women are recognizably better suited than men; nursing and dressmaking are but two of them. If the supply of women for these vocations were limited, the demand would soon fix an adequate wage.

“It has occurred to me many times,” persevered Jeannette, “that it would perhaps solve the problem,—or help solve it,—if certain professions and certain kinds of work were restricted by law to women. I’ve been told that in Japan only those who are blind may be embalmers of the dead. It restricts this vocation to a class of unfortunates which otherwise would have great difficulty in earning its living, and as a consequence there are no blind mendicants in Japan. I would advocate legislation in this country that would restrict certain occupations solely to women, and then I would limit the women who were eligible to fill them to widows or to those who could prove they must support themselves.”

“There is little doubt that becoming wage-earners tends to keep women out of matrimony,” Miss Holland said thoughtfully. “I know it did with me. There was a young professor of archæology from Wesleyan who wanted me very earnestly to marry him, and I should have liked to have done so, but I was working then, and had taken Jerry to live with me,—he was only eight,—and the professor’s salary was not large enough for the three of us.”

“And think what a wonderful wife you would have made!”

“I don’t know about that,” smiled Miss Holland, “but I was interested in his work and I should have enjoyed helping him.”

“Exactly!” cried Jeannette. “I have no doubt you would have helped him very materially, whereas you gave your wits and your life in helping Mr. Kipps over the rough parts of his business days for a consideration of fifty dollars a week!”

“He could have found somebody else who could have helped him just as well.”

“But that doesn’t make it any fairer,” insisted Jeannette. “What have you got to show for your twenty-five years of helping Mr. Kipps? ... This!” She spread out her hands significantly.

“Well, I have my old age provided for,” said Miss Holland, with an indulgent smile. “I get my check for half-salary from the office regularly the first of every month. I suppose I’ll continue to get that until my rheumatism or my heart carries me off.”

“But is that any reward for twenty-five years of slavery and drudgery? How many thousand and tens of thousands of dollars have your brains saved the Corey Publishing Company?”

“That isn’t all of it. You must remember I have Jerry.”

§ 3

Yes, she had Jerry, said Jeannette to herself, lying awake that night for long aching hours of whirling thoughts after she was in bed. Miss Holland’s old age was rich in the love this nephew, his wife and children bore her.

And it came to the sleepless woman in the bed that it was not the love Miss Holland received that mattered; it was what she gave and had given that made her life, in spite of old age, rheumatism and growing helplessness, glorious with complete and satisfying happiness.

CHAPTER IV

§ 1

“Dent—Department—Derrick—Desmond—Deutsch—Deveraux—Deverley—De Vinne—Devlin....”

There it was: “Martin Devlin, Motor Cars,—North Broad Street.” Jeannette’s polished finger-nail rested beneath the name and her lips formed the words without a sound. She closed the Philadelphia Directory, turned from the telephone desk in the big New York hotel, and walked slowly out into the bright autumn glare of the street.

Thanksgiving was next week; there would be no difficulty in securing leave at the office to be absent from Wednesday night until Monday morning.

“I’d just like to see,” she kept repeating to herself. “There’d be no harm in seeing what kind of a place he has. I could learn so much just walking by.”

An odd excitement took possession of her. She saw herself in the train, she saw herself in a large, comfortable room at the Bellevue-Stratford, saw herself in her smartest costume, sauntering up Broad Street.

“I’ve a good mind to do it,” she whispered. “It could do no possible harm. I’d just like to see.”

She was unable to reach any definite conclusion, but she inspected her wardrobe carefully, deciding exactly what she would wear if she went to Philadelphia, and then did a very reckless thing: she bought herself a sumptuous garment, a short outer jacket of broadtail and kolinsky, a regal mantle fit for a millionaire’s wife. A giddy madness seemed to settle upon her after this; her savings in the bank,—the savings which were to buy another bond,—were almost wiped out, and she deliberately drew a check for what remained. Some power outside of herself seemed to take charge of her actions; she moved from one step to another as if hypnotized; she spoke to Mr. Allister about two extra days at Thanksgiving, she bought her ticket and chair-car reservation at the Pennsylvania Station, she wrote the Bellevue-Stratford to hold one of their best outside rooms for her, she explained with simulated carelessness to Beatrice Alexander that there was a Book-Dealers’ Convention in Philadelphia which the firm had requested her to attend, and the four o’clock train on the afternoon of the holiday found her bound for the Quaker city.

As she sat stiffly upright in her luxurious armchair, staring out upon the dreary New Jersey marshes, panic suddenly came upon her.

What was she doing? Was she crazy? Was Miss Sturgis of the Mail Order Department this woman, so elegantly clad, speeding toward Philadelphia? And on what mad errand? After years of careful living, after years of prudent saving, was it actually she, Jeannette Sturgis, who had recklessly flung to the four winds the bank account of which she had been so proud? Oh, she must be mad, indeed!

She grasped the arms of her chair and instinctively glanced from one end to the other of the palatial car. She was seized with a violent impulse to get off. There was Manhattan Transfer; she could take a train back to the city from there. Determinedly, she gazed out upon the empty, cold-looking platform when the train reached the station, but she made no move, and as the wheels commenced to rumble beneath her once more, she sank back resignedly into her seat, and a measure of calmness returned.

She was not committing herself merely by going to Philadelphia and walking past Martin’s place of business! Suppose she did meet him! Suppose they actually encountered one another, face to face! What then? There was nothing compromising in that! She could explain her presence in Philadelphia in a thousand ways should he be interested. She blessed the judgment that had prompted her to confide in no one; Beatrice believed she was attending a Book-Dealers’ Convention, Alice that she was having her Thanksgiving dinner with Miss Holland.

§ 2

As she left the overheated parlor car at Broad Street Station her composure was thoroughly restored. There was a tingling nimbleness in the air; the clear, November day was bright with metallic sunshine. Jeannette tipped the “red-cap” for carrying her bags, climbed into a taxi-cab and with a casual air that seemed to spring from familiarity with such proceedings, directed to be driven to her hotel.

The cold bare streets, deserted on account of the holiday, the brilliant foyer of the Bellevue, the urbane room-clerk, the gilded elevator cage, the large high-ceilinged bedroom with its trim, orderly furniture, its double-bed, glistening with white linen, its discreet engravings of Watteau ladies in the gardens of Versailles, followed in quick succession. Then she was standing at the window looking down into the wide, dismal gray street far below, and the departing bell-boy softly closed the door behind him.

She was here; she was in Philadelphia; she would have that to remember always. If nothing else happened, she could never forget she had come this far.... Somewhere in the city was Martin; he was preparing to eat his Thanksgiving Dinner; it was a quarter past six, he was probably dressing! ... Suppose he elected to eat the meal with friends in the main dining-room of her hotel! Her throat tightened convulsively and her fingers twitched. Well, she would be equal to facing him if he saw her; she would not be frightened into abandoning the course that was natural for her to follow. If it had been actually the case that she was here in Philadelphia to attend a Book-Dealers’ Convention, she would put on her black satin dinner frock and go down to dinner with her book; she did not propose to allow herself to do differently.... It would be ridiculous to eat her Thanksgiving dinner upstairs in her rooms!

She bathed, she did her hair with unusual success, she powdered her neck and arms, she donned the black satin with the square neck and jet trimming, and with her book beneath her arm, mesh bag in her hand, descended to the dining-room at half past seven. There was an instant’s terror as she stood in the curtained doorway of the brilliantly-lit dining-room. There rushed upon her impressions of flowers, music, the odor of food, a wave of heat, the flash of napery, the gleam of cutlery, faces, faces everywhere,—heads turning,—eyes following,—whispers,—a hush as she made her way in the wake of the obsequious head-waiter.

Steeling her nerves, measuring every movement, she seated herself with deliberation, deliberately set her bag and book at her right hand, deliberately turned her attention to the menu, deliberately raised her eyes, and gazed about the room as she deliberately ordered.

But there was nothing! There was nobody! No one was looking at her; no one had noticed her entrance! The music was wailing in waltz measure, the diners were talking and laughing, attendants hurrying to and fro. He was not there; there was no one faintly resembling him in the room.

She cleared her throat and raised a tumbler of water to her lips, but as she did so, her teeth chattered an instant against the thin glass.

§ 3

Philadelphia awoke the next day with the bustle of business. Feet clip-clipped on the pavements, taxies chugged and honked, trucks bumped and rattled, street-cars rumbled and clanged their bells. Life, teeming, bustling, rushing, burst from every corner and doorway.

Mechanically Jeannette moved through her early morning routine; she dressed, breakfasted, read her newspapers; she drew upon her shoulders the handsome fur jacket, as, gloved, hatted and gaitered, she stepped out on the street.

“Taxi, lady?” No, she preferred to walk. Her number was only a few squares away.

An intent and hurrying tide of pedestrians set against her, congested traffic choked the street. She was an interested observer, and made but a leisurely progress, stopping at the shop windows, studying their displays. Nothing unusual in any of them attracted her; New York was more up-to-the minute in fads and fancies; the merchants there were more enterprising; they knew what was what; these Philadelphia shop-keepers merely aped their ways and followed their leads. There was no city in the world, she thought with pride, where merchandising was such a fine art and where novelties so quickly caught on as in New York. She wondered why people lived in Philadelphia when they could just as well live in New York. She passed a theatre and read the announcement on the bill-board; the play had been in New York six months ago!

She captured her wandering thoughts and looked about her, wondering how far she had walked.

“Vine Garden?”

“The next cross-street, Madam.”

Her pulses stirred and unconsciously she quickened her pace. She was presently in the neighborhood of the number she sought. It ought to be right here.... She edged her way towards the curb and gazed up at the façades of stores and buildings. Strange,—there was nothing here that resembled an automobile agency! That building was a piano store, and in the next sewing machines were sold.... Suddenly the name leaped at her in a window’s reflection. It was across the street! She wheeled about and there it was: Martin Devlin—Motor Cars. The name was in flowing script, the letters rounded and bright with gold, and the sign tilted out slightly over the sidewalk. Her heart plunged and stood still. That was her husband’s place of business! There it was: Martin Devlin—Motor Cars!

The appearance of the agency impressed her. Across its front were four large plate-glass windows, two on each side of the entrance. On these also appeared Martin’s name in the same style of flowing script, and beneath, in Roman type, the name of the automobile he handled. The show-room was spacious and softly illuminated with reflected light from alabaster bowls hung from the ceiling by brass chains. There were a half dozen models of the motor car, ranged within, three on a side, their noses pointing toward one another obliquely. The high polish of nickel and varnish, here and there, reflected the bright electric radiance above. The place had the air of elegance.

Curious, but with galloping pulses, Jeannette picked her way across the street, and slowly strolled past. Through the plate-glass windows she could see two young men standing, their arms folded, talking. Neither was Martin. She turned and retraced her steps, swiftly inspecting. Every moment her confidence increased. She noted the walls of the show-room were of cream-tinted terra-cotta brick, the floor of smooth cement with rich rugs defining the aisles; in the rear was a balcony where she could see yellow electric lights burning over desks, and make out the faces and figures of two or three girls. That was where the offices were located, no doubt, where Martin would have his desk.

Was he in? Would she risk a meeting? Did she have nerve enough to go inside and say: “Miss Sturgis would like to see Mr. Devlin!” ... It was extraordinary, amazing! ... How utterly overcome he would be! ... To have his wife, whom he hadn’t seen for fourteen years, walk in upon him that way! ... It wasn’t fair to him, after all. She had better go back to the hotel and write him,—or perhaps it would be better to telephone.

Emotions, impulses, strange and contradictory, pulled her one way and another. The apprehension, the misgivings of yesterday were absent now. There was no longer any question in her mind as to whether or not she wanted to see Martin; she knew she wanted to see him very much; in fact, her mind was made up, she must see him. It would be a thrilling experience, after so many years.... When they parted, it had not been because they had ceased to be fond of one another. They had liked,—yes, even loved each other, at the very moment of separation.... How was it to be managed? How could she arrange to meet him with propriety? Her appearance, she was aware, would make an impression upon him; that effect would be lost in writing or telephoning.... Perhaps she had better go back to the hotel and think it over, but then she might never again find the courage which was hers at that moment.... She must do something; she could not stand there indefinitely gazing through the window at the motor cars inside! The young men within, she observed, had noticed her.

With heart that hammered at her throat, she stepped to the heavy door; it swung back at her touch. There was a pleasant warmth within. One of the young men came hurrying forward, rubbing his hands, one over the other, bowing politely, a beaming smile upon his face.

“Good morning, Madam. Interested in the Parrott?”

Jeannette swept the show-room with a quick look before answering. There was no one there remotely like Martin.

“I was thinking about one,” she admitted.

“Most happy to arrange a demonstration at any time.... What model did you fancy?”

Jeannette moved about the cars, peering into the interiors of their tonneaus, commenting upon the upholstery and finish, pretending an attention to the young salesman’s glib explanations.

“Shift here is automatic ... cylinders ... compression ... hundred-and-eighteen-inch wheel-base, ... equipment just as you see it, ... rear tire extra, of course, ... lovely car for a lady to drive ... rides like a gazelle ... just like a gazelle ... you wouldn’t know you were moving.... Lovely engine, isn’t it, Madam? ... A child could easily take it apart.”

Jeannette nodded and appeared interested. All the time she was thinking: “I wonder if he’s up there—I wonder if he’s up there.”

“Mr. Devlin ...?” she hazarded.

“Oh, you know Mr. Devlin?” The possibility seemed to fill the salesman with rare pleasure; it was a discovery, unexpected, delightful.

“I—I used to know him years ago,” Jeannette faltered.

“He’s a splendid man, isn’t he?” glowed the youth. “Wonderful personality,—a regular ‘good fellow.’ He’s made quite a record with the Parrott, you know. Unfortunately he’s out just now, but he’s expected. I’m sure he’ll be glad to know you called, and I’ll be very pleased to tell him. You didn’t mention.... May I ask the name?”

Jeannette hesitated. This was not the way she would have him hear of her.

“No,—I’ll call again; I’ll come in later. I’m—- I’m stopping at the Bellevue; it isn’t far.”

“Couldn’t I arrange a demonstration for you this afternoon? At any hour you say. I’d like to show you the way the Parrott rides,—just like a gazelle. I’ll have our driver come with the limousine, or perhaps you’d prefer the landaulet model.... You might like to pay some calls this afternoon; it would give you a chance to test the Parrott and see how you like it.... Ah, here’s Mr. Devlin!”

The heavy glass front door opened. Jeannette felt the cold air from the street. She gave a quick glance as she turned her back, her heart plunging. It was Martin all right, but what a changed and different Martin! So much older, so much larger than she remembered him! He wore a Derby hat and had a cigar.

The salesman had left her side and was communicating her presence to his employer. Jeannette stood with both hands pressed tightly against her heart and fought for self-possession.

She heard Martin speak. That voice ...! That voice ...! It suffocated her. An avalanche of memories and forgotten emotions swept down upon her.... He was coming! She even recognized his step!

“’Morning, Madam,”—there was the old briskness, and alertness in his tone!—“what can I——”

She straightened herself and turned regally.

“Good morning, Martin,” she said smiling. Her color was high, she was trembling, her pulses racing.

There was a quick jerk of his head,—a well-remembered mannerism,—and a lightning survey of her features.

“Good God! ... Jan!”

Emotions played in his face, his eyes darted about her, his color faded and flamed darkly. His confusion gave her composure. He was handsome still, smooth-shaven and clean; his cheeks were fuller, a trifle florid, he had a well-defined double-chin, his black, thick hair was streaked with wiry, white threads; he had grown stouter, had acquired a girth, but his fatness was robust and healthy. He had gained in presence, in firmness of feature, in polish,—a man of business and affairs, energetic, a leader.

“Are you surprised to see me, Martin?”

“Well, of course, ... well, ... I should say!”

She was conscious that her beauty and stateliness, her costume, her fashionableness overwhelmed him.

“I’ll be ... I’ll be damned!” he enunciated. “Excuse me, Jan,—but I’ll be ... I’ll be damned!”

An amused sound escaped Jeannette. She was smiling broadly; she felt she had the situation well in hand.

“I’m sorry I startled you, Martin. I happened to be passing and I saw your name and thought I’d drop in.... How’ve you been after all these years?”

“Oh,—all right, I guess. Sure, I’ve been fine.... And you? I guess there’s no need of asking.”

“I’ve been quite well. I’m never sick. I came down to Philadelphia to attend a Book-Dealers’ Convention.... I’m stopping at the Bellevue.”

“Well—er, you going to be in town long?”

“Oh,—two or three days. I’m going back to New York Sunday, I guess. I think I can get away by that time.... This is a fine car you handle; its lines are really very beautiful.”

“It’s a good car, all right. I had a big year this year,—and last year, too.”

“Well, that’s good; I’m glad to hear it.... I never heard of the Parrott before.”

“You didn’t? ... Well, we think we advertise a good deal. It ranks up among the best.... Are you—are you married or anything like that?”

Jeannette laughed richly.

“Not since an experience I had some fourteen years ago that didn’t take!”

Martin echoed her amusement. He was regaining his ease; she could see he was beginning to enjoy himself.

“You know I took my maiden name when I went back to work; everybody knew me there as ‘Miss Sturgis’; it seemed easier.”

“Yes, I see,” Martin agreed.

“I’m still with the old company.”

“What,—the same old publishing outfit?”

“Yes; I’m in charge of the Mail Order Department now.... We do quite a business.”

“Is that so? And how do you like it?”

“Oh, I like it all right. They think a lot of me there, and I do about as I please.... I’m thinking of resigning though; one of these days, pretty soon, I’ll quit. It gets on your nerves after awhile, you know.”

“Yes, I guess it does.”

A momentary embarrassment came upon them.

“Well, it was pleasant to catch a glimpse of you, again, Martin. If you’re ever in New York, ring me up. You know the office——”

“Well, say,—I don’t like to have you go away like this! I’d like to see something of you while you’re in town,—and talk over old times. There’s a lot of things I’ll bet we’d find interesting to tell one another.”

“I shouldn’t wonder,” she said lightly.

“I got a business engagement for lunch unfortunately”; he scowled in troubled fashion. “I can’t very well get out of it.... You’re at the Bellevue? ... Well, how about dinner? Couldn’t we get together for dinner?”

“Why, I guess so. Yes,—that would be lovely,” said Jeannette with an air of careful consideration.

“I’ll bring my wife; Ruthie will be glad to meet you. You knew I married again, didn’t you?”

Jeannette’s expression did not alter by the quiver of an eyelash; she continued to regard Martin with smiling eyes.

“No, I hadn’t heard.... I didn’t suppose.... So you married, again?”

“Yes, I married a widow,—a widow with two kids: girl and a boy,—splendid youngsters.... Say, you got to see those kids; they’re Jim-dandies!”

“That’s ... that’s fine.”

“And I think you’ll like Ruthie, too, Jan. She isn’t your style exactly, but she’s all right. There’s no side to Ruthie. I think you’ll like her; she’s a fine little woman and a great little mother. You’ll like her, I’ll bet a hat.”

“I’m sure I shall.”

“Then it’s all right for to-night? Ruthie’ll join me downtown and we’ll come over to the hotel, and the three of us will have a great little dinner together and chew the rag about old times.... Say, d’you ever see that old ragamuffin, Zeb Kline?”

“Oh, yes, indeed. I saw him two or three weeks ago. He’s quite successful, now, you know; he’s made a great deal of money; married Nick Birdsell’s daughter.”

“Is that so! Well, is that so! He was a card all right, a great old scout.... And d’you ever see any of the rest of the old gang: Adolph Kuntz, an’ Fritz Wiggens, an’ Steve Teschemacher an’ old Gibbsy?”

“Oh, yes, occasionally.”

“Say, what’s old Gibbsy doing? He was a wormy little rat, all right, wasn’t he?”

“He’s got a very fine place, now, down on the Point,—quite an estate.”

“Well, wouldn’t you know it! He’d be just the kind of a little tightwad that would build himself a swell house! ... And what happened to old Doc French?”

Jeannette’s countenance changed and she shook her head.

“Don’t bother to tell me now. Save it up for to-night. We’ll have a great talk-fest.... Ruthie and I will show up at the hotel,—what time? Let’s make it early so we can have all evening. Six-thirty? How’s that?”

Jeannette smiled assent.

“We’ll be there at six-thirty, and say, Jan, you know this is going to be my party all right—all right.”

He accompanied her to the door, knocking the Derby hat nervously against his knee, his cigar gone out.

“Then we’ll see you to-night, Jan. Six-thirty, hey? ... Gee, I’m glad you dropped in! We’ll have a great little old talk-fest.”

“To-night, then.”

“Sure. At the Bellevue. We’ll be there. Six-thirty.”

§ 4

Married? Married? It couldn’t be possible! Why, they had never been divorced! ... How could he be married again?

A great weariness came over Jeannette. It was disgusting! What had he wanted to get married again for? Pugh! It was most disappointing.... Another woman! ... She had never imagined anything like this.... Was he living with her without a ceremony? Probably. She must be a cheap sort of creature.... But it didn’t make any difference whether she was legally his wife or not; it was the same thing. The fact remained he had taken up with someone else. No doubt she was known as “Mrs. Devlin.”

Jeannette went back to the hotel and upstairs to her room, laid aside her beautiful fur jacket, her hat, took off her dress, put on her kimona. Her mind, like a squirrel in a cage, went around and around over the same ground. How could he be married? Why, they had never been divorced!

The prospect of the evening suddenly palled upon her. Even though he had married, a dinner and chat alone with Martin would have had some piquancy; it would have been quite exciting and amusing to have recalled old friends, old memories. But there would be no spontaneity in their talk with another woman beside them, a bored and critical listener! It would be dreadful! An intolerable situation! ... She thought of a hurried return to New York, a telephone to Martin that she had been unexpectedly called home. Yet that seemed undignified; he would be sure to guess her reason, or if he did not, “Ruthie” could be depended upon to enlighten him. She shook her head in distaste. She was committed to this unpalatable program, now; she would be obliged to see it through,—but oh, how she was going to hate it! How she was going to despise every moment of it!

She considered the other woman, trying to imagine what she would be like.... Well, Ruthie might be comfortably established in her place, but she should have no ground for believing she was envied!

A reflection of herself at this moment in the mirror forced a smile from Jeannette’s lips as she detected upon her face a look of haughty condescension. She had been fancying the encounter with Ruthie and had unconsciously assumed the expression that would suit that moment.... Well, Ruthie would have the benefit of that withering, imperious glance; she would realize the minute she saw Jeannette Sturgis that here was a woman that would brook no patronizing airs from her, and in the course of the evening she would have it pointed out to her, in a manner which would leave no room for misunderstanding, that it was she, Jeannette, who had left Martin; hers had never been the rôle of the deserted wife; as far as “leavings” were concerned, Ruthie had them and welcome! ... Ah! She hated her!

The telephone trilled. Jeannette’s heart plunged as she heard Martin’s voice.

“Hello, Jan! Say,—I ’phoned Ruthie and she says for me to bring you out to our house to-night; she says it will be much pleasanter there and we can talk a whole lot better. I rang her up and explained about our having dinner with you at the Bellevue, but she insists that you come on out to our house. She said by all manner of means to bring you. She said she’d ’phone you, herself, but I said I didn’t think that was necessary.”

“Why-y,—I’m afraid——”

“You know we live out at Jenkintown; it’s an awful pretty suburb. I’d like you to see it and I’m crazy to have you see the kids. They’ll still be up by the time we get there. I’ll call for you a little after six and drive you out.”

Jeannette’s mind worked rapidly. There was nothing for her to do but to accept, and to accept graciously.

“That will be lovely, Mart. As you say it will be much nicer in the country. I shall really like to see your home and to meet—” she cleared her throat,—“Mrs. Devlin.”

“Well, that’ll be fine, Jan,—that will be great. Say, you couldn’t make that five-thirty just as well, could you? You see the office closes at five, and I’ll just have to bum ’round here doing nothing until it’s time to call for you,—and then besides you’ll have a little light left so you c’n see something of the country, and I want to tell you, Jan, Jenkintown’s a swell little suburb.”

“Why, yes, Martin. Five-thirty will be perfectly all right for me.”

“That’s fine then; I call for you at five-thirty.”

She hung up the receiver and bent forward so that her brow rested lightly against the mouthpiece of the instrument, her eyes closed, and after a moment she squeezed them tight shut.... Ah, what pain! ... What heart stabs! ... The prick of tears stung her eyeballs like needle points.

§ 5

She powdered her shoulders and did her hair; she red-lipped her mouth; she hooked the black satin dress about her; she hung her generous string of artificial pearls around her neck and screwed the large artificial pearl ear-rings upon her ears. At five o’clock she was ready, and for the ensuing thirty minutes she studied her reflection in the glass, turning first to one side, then to the other, noting various effects. She wore no hat, but to-night her hair, with its distinguished touch of white, was dressed high, and thrust into its thick coil at the back of her head were three large brilliant, rhinestone combs.

Promptly at the half-hour, Martin was announced, and slipping on the marvellous jacket, rolling the fur luxuriously against her neck, Jeannette descended in the elevator and met him in the foyer. The glance he gave her satisfied her; she knew Martin; he had not changed. There remained only Ruthie, and in that instant it came to Jeannette a cold, disdainful manner would put herself, bound and helpless, at Ruthie’s mercy. They were two shrewd and clever women,—she assumed Ruthie would be shrewd and clever,—meeting one another under strange and difficult circumstances; any hint of condescension, any suggestion of a patronizing air, and Ruthie would be laughing at her. No, the part for her to play was one of all sweetness and amiability; graciousness was her only salvation.

Martin guided her out of the hotel, his fingers at her elbow. A limousine swept up to the door. It was a Parrott, and there was a liveried chauffeur at the wheel.

“Get right in, Jan.”

He stooped through the doorway and sank heavily against the upholstered cushions beside her. The “starter” touched his cap, and banged the door. Memories swept back upon Jeannette, memories of another motor-car, a taxi-cab, and another “starter” who had banged shut an automobile door upon the two of them, and of a night pulsing with high emotions, hopes and young love. Her little excited mother with her pendent, trembling cheeks, dressed in her lavender velvet, had been with them on that other night, and she had sat beside her daughter where Martin now was sitting, and Martin had occupied the small collapsible seat opposite, and had balanced himself there with his knees uncomfortably hunched up, to keep his feet out of the way!

“... what we call the Parrott Convertible; it’s just out this year,” Martin was explaining. “You see with a little manipulation of the glass windows and seats you can turn it from a limousine into a Sedan and drive it yourself.”

“How clever!” she said. “You know, Martin, it delights me to think of your being so successful. It was coming to you. You were born to be a good salesman, and I’m glad you’ve gotten into a line of business where your talents count for something. You were entirely out of your element with that Engraving Company; they didn’t begin to appreciate you.”

“They didn’t, did they? That younger Gibbs,—Herbert Gibbs,—he was certainly a little rat, if there ever was one. You know I had a terrible row with him after—after....”

“And I’m glad, too,” proceeded Jeannette hastily, “that you’ve married again and ’ve got your son and daughter. You were always crazy about children. Remember how you used to rave about Alice’s Etta and Ralph when they were babies?”

“You bet you. How are——?”

“And then you were much too fine and too good for that Cohasset Beach crowd——”

“They were a bunch of good scouts, all right.”

“Weren’t they?” Jeannette said veering quickly. “Every one of them has made good. Steve Teschemacher’s quite wealthy.”

“Tell me about him,—tell me about ’em all. Say, do you ever go down to Cohasset Beach any more?”

“Oh, yes; frequently. Alice and Roy bought there, you know.”

“The deuce they did! You don’t mean to say so? Well, say, Jan, who’s living in the bungalow? ... Say, Janny, I often think....”

They were busy in reminiscences, interrupting one another, laughing, ejaculating, now and then arrested by a memory that was not altogether mirth-provoking and unexpectedly stirred them. At times Martin swayed in his seat and pounded his knee.

“By God!” he would shout gleefully, “by God, I’d forgotten that!—by God, that was a hot one, all right! Say,—that had gone completely out of my mind. You’re a wonder for remembering little things, Jan! ... By golly!”

The car rolled smoothly out over the paved highway that circled through the hills. Large, handsome houses with lights shining here and there from windows, and surrounded by tall, gaunt, leafless trees, alternated on either side of the road and fled past. Their own vehicle was but one link in a long chain of nimble bugs with glowing antennæ which crawled hard upon one another along the winding course.

There came an abrupt turn, the motor car swung up a steep driveway, slid on to crunching gravel, and stopped.

“Here we are!” exclaimed Martin. The chauffeur leaped from his seat and attentively opened the car door.

A large frame house of gracious lines, with exterior stone chimneys, many windows, and a precipitous lawn that swept down to the roadway a hundred feet or more below.

“We get a splendid view of the valley here,” said Martin, coming to stand beside Jeannette as she looked out across the country. The landscape was shrouded in dusk, pricked with a myriad of lights; there was a jagged silhouette of distant tree-tops and beyond a pale, mother-of-pearl sky touched faintly with dying pink.

They turned to the house and as Martin stooped to insert his latch-key there was the quick run of small feet within, the door was flung open and a little girl hurled herself upon him with a violent silent hug.

“Well, well,” said Martin, “how’s my darling?” He kissed her with equal vigor, his hat knocked at an angle upon his head.

“This is ‘Tinker,’” he said, smiling at Jeannette. “Everybody calls her ‘Tinker,’ but her real name’s ‘Elizabeth.’ Where’s your brother, Tinker?”

An answering clatter and rush came from an interior region, and a small boy flung himself upon the man.

“And this is Joe, Janny. He has a nickname, too; sometimes we call him ‘Josephus,’—don’t we, old blunderbuss?”

There was another vigorous embrace.

The two children regarded Jeannette with shy but friendly glances. The little girl was about nine, the boy two or three years younger. Tinker was brown of skin and brown of eye; her hair was short and tawny and swept off her face in an old-fashioned way, held back by an encircling comb that reached from one temple to the other. She was freckled and had an alert, engaging expression, while her brown eyes were sharp as shoe buttons, and twinkled between long tawny eyelashes. Simply, she approached Jeannette and held up her brown arms as she offered her lips. The boy was diminutive and wiry with furtive glance and grinning mouth that displayed a gaping hole left by two missing front teeth. He hung his head as he held out his small hand, but as Jeannette took it, he darted a quick upward look into her face and gave her a friendly elfish grin.

Jeannette was moved, captivated at once by the charm of both.

“They’re darlings!” came involuntarily from her, and then there was the sound of descending feet upon the stairs and Jeannette straightened herself from the crouching position in which she had greeted the children to face their mother.

“A pretty woman—and sweet—younger than I expected,” went Jeannette’s thoughts; “nothing to fear here.”

Ruthie was in truth a pretty woman, pretty without being either beautiful or handsome. Her expression was bright, alert, eager, her manner friendly and effusive. She resembled her small son.

“This is Ruthie, Jeannette——” began Martin.

“How do you do?” said Ruthie, hurrying forward, leaving no doubt of her cordiality. “It was very nice of you to come to us to-night.”

“Not at all,” Jeannette responded with her best smile. “It was nice of you to want me.”

“I was anxious to know you,” said Ruthie.

She could afford to be gracious thought Jeannette. She had everything: the home, the children, money, position,—she had Martin! ... Was it possible they were really married? Or did Ruthie merely think she was his wife?

Jeannette was piloted upstairs to a large, pleasant bedroom. The chairs, the tables, the bureau and chiffonier, the twin beds were all of bright bird’s-eye maple; rose hangings were at the windows, rose silk comforters were neatly folded at the foot of each bed, rose shades on the wall lights diffused a soft rosy radiance. The dressing-table glittered with silver toilet articles, and Jeannette noticed they were all monogramed “R.T.D.” Flanking them were large silver-framed photographs, one of Martin,—a handsome, fierce-looking Martin in evening dress,—the other of the two children, Tinker with her arm about her brother. Domesticity radiated everywhere.

“I never looked better,” Jeannette thought consolingly as she caught a full-length reflection of herself in the long mirror impanelled in the bathroom door. Her hair pleased her; her high color was most becoming; she knew herself to be beautiful. She went downstairs, serene and confident, sure of being able to carry off the evening with lightness and ease.

“I thought it would be quieter and perhaps a little pleasanter without the children at table,” said Ruthie brightly as Jeannette joined her, “so I arranged to give them an early supper, and now Martin’s been scolding me. He thinks you’ll be disappointed.”

“Oh, it doesn’t matter,” Jeannette murmured.

“Martin’s almost unreasonable about them; he wants them all the time,” continued Ruthie. “I tell him if he had them on his hands all day, perhaps he wouldn’t be quite so enthusiastic!” She laughed an amused little laugh like the twittering of a bird. “He couldn’t be fonder of them if they were his own,” she added.

There was a moment’s pause.

“You see, I’d lost my first husband before I met Martin,” Ruthie continued thoughtfully. “My first marriage wasn’t very successful.”

She did think she was married then!

“You were divorced?” asked Jeannette. If there was a barb to the question it failed in effect.

“No; Mr. Mason was killed. He was—was rather intemperate, and there was an accident. I met Martin some time afterwards and he was wonderful to me.”

“You’ve known him long?”

“Let me see. About seven years. Joe was only a baby, and we were living in Scranton. Martin and I married about a year after my husband’s death. I was having a very hard time of it; Mr. Mason carried but very little life insurance and I took up manicuring; I had to; there was no other way for us to get along.”

She smiled at the last.

He was sorry for her, thought Jeannette; that was the way of it.

“That had been your—your profession formerly?” Jeannette asked with an innocent air.

“No, I had to learn it,” Ruthie said, unruffled. “I had to do something. I only did private work, you know.” She cast a quick glance at Jeannette’s face. “Martin and I didn’t meet in a barber shop!” she added with a bright laugh.

Jeannette could think of nothing to say to this, so she nodded, and gazed into the red coals of the grate-fire before which the two women were standing.

“Here he is!” Ruthie said, suddenly.

Martin’s step could be heard approaching and in a moment he entered the living-room. Jeannette noticed he had changed into dinner clothes.

“Well, Jan, it’s mighty darned nice to see you here,” he said advancing, rubbing his hands. He appeared well-groomed, was freshly shaved, his clothes fitted him to perfection, his thick neck and swarthy skin seemed clean and wholesome.

“Have a little cocktail?” he suggested. “I’ve got a cracker-jack bootlegger that brings me the stuff direct from New York,—real old Gordon! If this damned governor of ours has his way, we’re not likely to get any more of it. This prohibition stuff makes me sick, doesn’t it you?”

“It doesn’t bother me, Martin,” Jeannette answered lightly. “I never drink anything.”

“Well, how about having a little cocktail to-night? Just by way of celebration? Huh? What d’you say?”

“No-o, thank you, Martin; not to-night. I really never touch it, but don’t let me stop you two.”

“Ruthie doesn’t drink either. She’s a plumb tee-totaler,—believes in it! What do you know about that?”

Martin laughed good-naturedly. His mirth had the old-time extraordinary infectious quality.

“Don’t bother about mixing a cocktail to-night, Martin dear,” Ruthie said in a persuasive voice. “It takes you so long with the ice and everything, and dinner’s late, now.”

“I’ll have a little of the straight stuff, then,” he said, still rubbing his hands in high good humor.

They went together into the dining-room through the double glass doors, curtained in shirred folds of pink silk. The table was glittering with polished silverware and sparkling glass; in the center was a low fern in a metal fern-dish. Martin unlocked a door in the sideboard, took out a whisky bottle, held it up a moment to the light to inspect the measure of its contents, and poured himself an inch into a tumbler.

“D’you remember that guy who used always to say ‘Saloon’ when he was taking a drink?” asked Martin, grinning at Jeannette. “He was a card all right? ... Well, ‘saloon!’”

He drained the drink in two gulps, followed it with a draught of water, and sat down, smacking his lips.

A maid appeared, bearing a tureen of soup, and presently passed cheese straws. Jeannette observed her spotless white bibbed apron and black dress, and she took note of the fine sprays of celery and olives in side dishes on the table, twinkling with ice. The dinner proceeded comfortably,—well-served, well-cooked, stereotyped: a roast of beef, with potatoes browned in the pan, canned French peas, a salad of chopped apples and nuts, a dessert of cake and ice-cream. She recalled with a sharp twinge the “company” dinners she had struggled so hard to prepare for Martin and his friends, and the effort she had made to serve him things he liked so as to make him want to stay at home.... Ah, she had tried, she reminded herself, she had really tried hard to be a good wife to him! ... It was all so much easier for Ruthie; she had her cook, her waitress, and there was even the chauffeur. So easy to sit still and merely tell them what to do! ... And Martin? ... Well, he had matured, he had settled down, was more seasoned, more reasonable, more disciplined.... She noticed for the first time a jagged white scar on his right temple; it had not been there when she had known him!

Throughout dinner he was in the gayest of spirits; Ruthie turned bright alert eyes from one face to the other; Jeannette felt the last vestige of constraint slip from her. The talk was all of Tinker and Josephus, of the good schools of Jenkintown, of motor cars and the future of the automobile industry, of traffic laws and Philadelphia and things in general. Every once in awhile a chance remark would sound a personal note, but the three with one accord would veer away from it and pursue another topic. There was no telling where rocks of disaster might be hidden.

But after dinner, when Martin stood before the sucking coal fire in the living-room, stirring his coffee, a fresh cigar tilted up in the corner of his mouth, his head twisted to one side to avoid the smoke, it was evident the moment had arrived when he wanted to hear news of his old friends and start recalling old times. Tinker and her brother presented themselves to say good-night and their mother made them an excuse for leaving her husband and her guest together.

“She’s far smarter than one would ever suspect from that affected bright expression,” thought Jeannette smiling at the children as they tumbled themselves out of the room.

Ruthie did not reappear until nearly ten o’clock, and then came in with many apologies for having been detained. Martin, by that time, had heard all the news, had heard of Roy and Alice, of poor unfortunate Doc French, of ’Dolph Kuntz, and Fritz and Steve, and even of some of the changes in the publishing company which interested him. He was far from satisfied, however, and wanted to go over it all once more.

“Say, do you remember that night, Jan, you and I and that Scotch friend of yours and that awful fright he took along with him had dinner up on the Astor roof? What became of that guy?”

And——

“D’you ’member that time we got stuck out in the Sound aboard the Websters’ yacht? ... Say, do they have any more racing down there? ... What’s become of all the little A-boats?”

But Jeannette knew the time for leave-taking had come. She rose smiling.

“I’m sorry, Martin; I shall have to say good-night. I really must be going. My day’s very full to-morrow.”

He was loud in protest, a little unnecessarily loud, Jeannette thought. She tried to dissuade him from accompanying her back to the hotel, but he insisted.

“I wouldn’t think of you riding back all by yourself, Jan! That wouldn’t do at all. The car’s right here; the man’s waiting. He’ll run me in and run me out again in less than an hour; I’ll be home again in no time.”

Ruthie urged, too.

“Oh, yes,” she insisted brightly. “You must let Martin take you back to town; it won’t hurt him a bit, and you two have such a lot to talk over together about old times and everything.”

The little woman’s face was wreathed with smiles; she was confident, solicitous. She was sure of herself; sure of Martin; her concern had every semblance of sincerity. Jeannette felt baffled, vaguely irritated.

The two women said good-night to one another with appropriate phrases and amiability. Ruthie stood in the shining arch of the doorway as the motor car swept up to the steps, crunching on the fine gravel of the drive, and Jeannette and Martin got in. She even managed a little wave of the hand as its door slammed and the car started.

Jeannette hated her. It was impossible to guess what thoughts were behind that alert expression of innocent pleasure.

“You’ve come on in the world, Martin,” she observed.

“Yes, I’ve made a little money, but I’m going to make more,—a good deal more. You know, I often think of the old man and the old woman up there in Watertown settling down forty, or I guess it’s fifty, years ago, to running that little grocery business of theirs, and I can’t help wishing sometimes they were round to see how good I’ve made. They’d get an eyefull, all right! But I’ve worked for my success, Jan,—that is, I’ve worked hard the last five years. You know I was down and out for awhile?”

“Were you? I didn’t know that. How did that happen?”

Martin cleared his throat and twisted a little in his seat so as to talk more directly at her.

“I was pretty badly cut-up, Jan, when you ran out on me!”

“Were you?”

“You bet I was, and I began hitting her up there for awhile; I let things go to the devil and I was boozing a good deal. There were two or three years there when I wasn’t much better than a bum.”

“Martin!”

“Well, I was sore at the world,—and sore, I guess, at you. Yes, pretty damn sore. You know, Jan, I didn’t think you treated me quite right, and then I blamed myself an awful lot for the way I treated you.”

“It was too bad,” Jeannette said slowly. “I think maybe we were both wrong. We were very young and inexperienced, Mart.”

“Yes, that’s right. We pulled the wrong way.”

“I’m sorry you took it so badly. I didn’t feel extra good about it myself. I’ve often wished since....”

“Oh, there’s no use going over the old ground now. It’s all over and done with, but I was mighty fond of you, Janny.”

“Don’t, Martin.”

“You bet I was. I took it pretty hard when you left me; I didn’t care what happened to me.”

“I’m sorry. It wasn’t easy for me either. If you’d only come back,—or sent word....”

“You don’t understand, Jan. I was down and out then. I had nothing to offer you. I’d punched Gibbsy’s face and I’d lost my job and I was driving a truck,—that is, when I was working at all.”

“Martin!”

“Oh, what’s the use of going back over old times!” he said with sudden harshness. “You’ve changed and I’ve changed. I’m married now,—got a home and family,—and I’m happy, Jan. Ruthie’s a good little woman.”

“When did you marry, Mart?”

“In—let’s see!—in 1917; just before we got into the war. I got a job as a salesman in an automobile agency in Scranton. Tinker and her mother were living next door to my boarding-house; it was Tinker that caught my eye first; she and I used to have great times together; I was crazy about that kid, and then I met Ruthie.”

“And after that you were married?”

“Well, not right away. I had to get free first. You were awfully decent about not contesting the suit, Jan, but then I was pretty sure you wouldn’t.”

“And was there a suit?”

“Why, sure. I got a decree in New York. They gave it to me. You never showed up.”

“I don’t remember,” said Jeannette vaguely.

“You were served with a summons; we had the testimony of the process server! You let the case go by default.”

“Did I? ... I can’t ... I don’t seem to remember. What were the grounds? I thought in New York State you had to prove——”

Martin leaned forward in his seat and stared at her through the dimness in the car, trying to see her face.

“Say, what is this?” he asked. “Are you trying to kid me,—rub it in, or something like that?”

“No, Martin,” she answered earnestly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I never supposed we’d been divorced.”

“Good God! Did you think we were still married?”

“Why, certainly.”

The man dropped back against the upholstery with a short explosion of breath.

“Tell me about it, Martin.”

“You make it damned hard, Jan. If you’re trying to rub it in, you’re certainly doing a nifty job.”

“No, Martin, truly. I’m quite honest.”

He was silent and Jeannette had to plead again for enlightenment.

“I don’t understand this,” he said, troubled.

“But tell me. I want to know.”

“Well, you know I was damned sore at you,” he began at length. “I wanted to get married; Ruthie, Tinker and the baby needed me. She was up against it and was having a tough time trying to make ends meet. I wanted to help out but she wouldn’t let me and the only thing for it was to get married. So I went to a lawyer there in Scranton and asked him if he’d fix it so I could get a divorce from you. He got in touch with a firm in New York and they dug up all that rot about you and Corey——”

“Oh, my God!” gasped Jeannette in a whisper.

“Oh, I knew it was the bunk; you’d told me the story and I knew you’d given me the straight dope. But there was the evidence and the sworn affidavits of the hotel employees that Corey’s wife had secured. It made enough of a case. I’m damned ashamed of it now, Jan. I wish to God, I’d never done it, but I was sore, remember, and I wanted to get married to Ruthie.”

There was painful silence in the swaying car. Jeannette sat very still, two fingers of each hand pressed against either cheek.

“I was pretty certain you’d let it go by default,” Martin went on after awhile in a distressed voice. “It was no case you’d want to contest, and I thought you probably wanted your freedom as much as I did.... I thought surely you’d married long ago.”

Silence reigned again, Jeannette struggling with herself, Martin concerned at her voicelessness.

“By God, Jan, I thought you knew all about it,—I swear to God I did! The process server stated in court he’d handed you the summons, and saw you pick it up; I heard him say it with my own ears. The referee warned him about perjury, thought he smelled collusion, or something of that sort; he ragged me something fierce.... It was rotten the way it turned out, for the case came up right after your friend Corey died, and I felt pretty mean blackening a man’s character when he wasn’t more ’an cold in his grave, ’specially as I knew it was a frame-up.”

A pent-up breath escaped Jeannette like a moan. A scene flashed before her mind: a dark street,—the street just in front of the office—it was late and the crowd of clerks and workers was pouring out of the doorway, hurrying homeward with gravity in their hearts and the news on their lips that Chandler B. Corey, the president of the company, had that day dropped dead at his desk. And among these sobered men and women walked herself, shocked and shaken, trying to realize that the best friend she had in the world was gone, and would never be at hand again to advise her nor be interested in what befell her. As she stepped into the street a man in a slouch hat confronted her, demanding to know if she was Mrs. Martin Devlin, thrust a folded paper at her, and disappeared. She remembered drawing back, frightened and affronted, and after the man had made off, rescuing the paper from the sidewalk at her feet where it had fallen. It was dark in the street,—too dark to read. She recalled holding the paper up to decipher what was printed on the first page, and then, indifferent, her heart and mind heavy with the tragedy of the day, had thrust it into her muff and sorrowfully made her way homeward. Days later, when she remembered the incident and searched her muff, the paper had disappeared. It had fallen out; it was gone; and she dismissed the matter from her mind.

Now she realized the folded paper had been the summons bidding her come to court to defend herself against calumny, and to show reason why Martin Devlin should not be free to take unto himself another wife!

Suddenly something very precious died within her dismally. The excitement of the night dwindled and departed; the piquancy of her adventure drooped and faded; her interest in a situation that had up to that minute stirred pulse and imagination, shrivelled and evaporated. She was weary and bored; she felt disgusted and sick; she wanted to be quit of the whole affair, of smiling, alert, complacent Ruthie, of the homely, clumsy children, of this sleek, fat, selfish man beside her! ... Ah, she had been a fool ever to think ... ever to imagine.... A woman of her position, sensible, capable, independent,—stout, settled, middle-aged and gray! ... Oh, it was detestable,—it was humiliating,—insufferable!

They were at the hotel.

“You don’t want to let what I told you bother you, Jan. I never stopped to think how you’d feel about it. And you want to remember that those things never get out; they’re all kept strictly Q.T. It happened six or seven years ago and there isn’t a soul—Here, I’m coming in with you.”

“You needn’t bother, Martin.”

“That’s all right. I’ll see you inside.”

They moved through the revolving glass doors and mounted the steps into the brilliant lobby.

“Well, it’s been great to see you, and I surely have enjoyed talking over old times. By God, it’s been a great evening.”

“Yes, indeed. It’s been very amusing.”

“I’m awfully glad you looked me up.... And say, Jan, you like Ruthie, don’t you? Don’t you think she’s a nice little woman? Not your style exactly,—no side, or anything like that,—but she’s a damned agreeable little person, hey? ... You’re not sore at me now, are you, for that rotten trick I played on you? I’d never have done it if it had been up to me. It was the lawyers, you know. They dug up the story and put it over. I’d never have done it,—I swear to God, Jan, I wouldn’t! I’m—I’m sorry as the devil, now; by God, I am!”

“Let’s not talk about it, Martin; it’s all past and forgotten.”

“Well, that’s damned white of you, Jan,—damned white! I always said you were a sensible woman.”

Jeannette turned and held out her hand.

“Aw, say,” Martin protested, “aren’t you going in to the café with me and have some ginger ale or something? I hate to say good-night so soon. There’s a lot of things I want to ask you. I’d like to keep this evening going forever.”

But Jeannette’s one desire was to end it. She wanted her room, to have the door shut and locked behind her, to be alone.

“I’m sorry, Martin——”

“Just a small glass of ginger ale?” he pleaded.

“Thank you, no, Martin; I think I’d better go up.”

“Well, am I not to see you again? You’re not going, until Sunday, are you?”

“I shall be busy to-morrow; I’m engaged all day.”

“How about to-morrow night?”

“I’m not free then either.”

A frown settled on the man’s face.

“Damn it ...” he began disgustedly. She continued to smile pleasantly but offered no suggestion.

“Well, I’ll see you in New York some time soon,” he asserted finally; “I have to go up there once in awhile.”

“Yes, do that,” Jeannette said without enthusiasm.

“I’ll ’phone you? I’ll give you a ring at the office.”

“Yes, do that,” she repeated.

“Well, then, I guess I’d better say good-night.”

“Good-night, Martin.”

She turned toward the elevators, giving him a nod and a brief smile over her shoulder. As the gate of the cage slid shut, she caught another glimpse of him, standing where she had left him, perplexed, frowning, disconsolate,—staring after her.

§ 6

The train was crowded. Jeannette had chosen one at midday, thinking to have her lunch in the dining-car and so beguile away part of the tedium of the trip. It was Saturday; she had decided to return home at once rather than wait until Sunday; there was nothing to hold her in Philadelphia and she was anxious to get back to the little apartment in Waverly Place. Many other travellers had apparently conceived the same idea of having the noon meal on the way, and Jeannette discovered there were no seats left in the chair-car, so she was obliged to share one in a day coach with a short, plump lady with a prominent bust and short fat arms who sat up very straight beside her and wheezed audibly at every breath. Jeannette’s heavy suit-case was stowed in front of her, and pressed uncomfortably against her knees, while there was no place for her hat-box except in the aisle where it was stumbled over and cursed by every passing passenger. There were cinders embedded in the plush covering of the seat, the car was badly ventilated and smelled of warm, crowded humanity. At Trenton, feeling dirty and dishevelled, she made a swaying progress toward the dining-car only to find twenty people ahead of her. Disheartened, she returned to her seat, concluding to wait until she reached the city before she lunched. Perhaps she would go directly home and persuade Beatrice to make her some tea and toast.

The day was leaden, the country forlorn and dreary; the trees stood bare and black upon bare and blackened ground; the houses seemed cold, desolate and grimy. It began to rain as the train slowed down through smoky Newark, and long diagonal streaks of water slashed the dirty window-panes. Waiting travellers on platforms huddled under station sheds or bent their heads and umbrellas against the sharp wind and driving drops as they struggled toward the cars. The train grew steadily more crowded; people stood in the aisles, swayed and were pitched against those in the seats. Jeannette’s head began to ache dully and at every knock or kick her offending hat-box received she winced as though struck. In the tube beneath the Hudson River, the train came to a standstill and there was a long wait; women grew nervous, and a man said in a loud, laughing voice to a neighbor:

“Say, Bill, it’d be some pickings, all right, if the river came in on us while we were stuck here.”

“Oh, Jesus Mary!” gasped the woman next to Jeannette, and for some minutes the wheeze of her breathing rose to a higher key.

Finally, with much whirring, jerking and dancing of lights, the train rolled into the Pennsylvania Station.

“I’ll go home and get into bed, and Beatrice will bring me some tea and toast,” Jeannette whispered to herself, cramped and weary, fighting the pain in her head that grew steadily worse. She stumbled into a taxi-cab and went bumping and racketing down Seventh Avenue. The rain was now coming down in a forest of lances, and was driven in through the three-inch opening at the top of one of the windows. Jeannette tried to close it; her attempt was pitiful. The taxi skidded violently into Eighth Street and she was thrown to her knees, her hat jammed against the opposite side of the car.

“That’s all right, lady; nothin’ happened!” yelled the driver.

“In five minutes!” breathed Jeannette, one hand pressed hard against her breast.

Ah, here she was! Here she was, at last!

Her fingers shook as she fumbled with the key to the street door.

“Thank you, so much,” she said to the taxi-driver who brought her bags up to the landing. She handed him his fare. “Keep the change; I can manage the rest.”

Inside, she grasped her luggage with either hand, and resolutely mounted the two long flights of stairs, forcing herself to go to the top without pausing. She was panting, then, her head splitting.

She tried the apartment door; it was locked.

“Beatrice! Beatrice!” she called, rapping impatiently upon the panels.

A faint mewing came to her ears. There was no other answer.

“Oh, God,—she’s out!” Her cry was almost a sob. Of course! it was still the Thanksgiving vacation; Beatrice would be with her cousins in Plainfield; she wouldn’t be home until Sunday night!

Jeannette fumbled for her door-key. There was little light and she was obliged to kneel before she could find the hole in the lock. With a gasp she finally threw open the door and stumbled into the flat. It was cold, unaired, deserted. Mitzi, tail on end, welcomed her with shrill, complaining cries.

“Oh, you baby you,” Jeannette said aloud, blinking through her own distress and eyeing the cat. “You’ve been shut up in here since the day before yesterday and you’re just about starving.”

Mitzi confirmed this with a wail. Jeannette scooped the animal up with a long arm and carried her into the kitchen. It was cold and bleak in here, too, smelling foully of Mitzi’s incarceration.

A groan was wrung from Jeannette’s lips.

In the ice-box she found only a bowl half full of pickled beets, a plate of butter, two rather shrivelled bananas, and a few pieces of dried toast. She clapped the kettle on the stove, lighted the gas, and stood caressing the cat until the water had warmed; then she moistened the toast and set it in a soup plate on the floor.

“Here, you poor critter, eat that until I get you something decent.” Mitzi leaped at the meal, jerking the food into her mouth, growling gluttonously.

Jeannette put her fingers to her head and watched the performance, breathing hard.

“I must,” she said aloud. “It won’t kill me.”

She went into her own room, laid aside her fur coat, put on an old mackintosh and felt hat, once more went out into the rain, and presently dragged herself up the stairs again with a bottle of milk and a bag of provisions.

Her temples throbbing and little streaks of pain darting through her eyeballs, she moved resolutely through the next few minutes. While the kettle was heating, she got herself into her kimona, and braided her hair. Then she returned to the kitchen, mixed a large bowl of bread and milk for the cat, and dutifully made herself tea which she drank, munching between sips some saltine crackers warmed in the oven.

Peace gradually descended upon her. Mitzi, replete and satisfied, licked milk-stained whiskers, and eyed her comfortably from the floor. The pain in Jeannette’s head was less violent, but she was very cold.

“I’ll get a hot-water bottle and go to bed,” she said. “I think I’ll go crazy if I keep on this way.”

She proceeded to her room, made her bed, then commenced to unpack her bags and put away her things. When she was about finished, she came upon the fur coat where she had left it on a chair. She picked it up and stared at it, observing its brilliant silk lining, its smooth, plushy surface, the soft texture of its fur collar. Suddenly she flung it from her into a far corner on the floor, and for a moment stood a tragic figure with clenched hands, flashing eyes and heaving breast.

There was a diversion,—a sound close at hand that startled her. Mitzi had jumped on the bed, and was gazing up at her with head twisted to one side, glassy eyes fixed inquiringly upon her face, long tail alert, the tip waving gently. The cat opened her mouth and mewed plaintively. Jeannette relaxed, gathered the animal into her arms, and slowly sank down upon the bed. Mitzi, nestling comfortably against her, began to purr rhythmically. A slow trembling came to the woman, and her fingers shook as they stroked Mitzi’s back. She fought desperately to check the gathering tempest within her, and for a moment struggled with firm pressed lips and shut teeth as the tears welled up into her eyes, rolled down her cheeks, and splashed upon her hand. Then suddenly the floodgates of her heart burst, grief overwhelmed her, and she sank sideways on the bed, carrying the cat to her neck, cuddling and stroking it, while burying her face against the soft fur, and passionately sobbing:

“Oh, Mitzi—Mitzi! I love you so—I love you so!”

THE END