Gloria and Treeless Street

by Annie Hamilton Donnell

For the time, Treeless Street, lined with little children, vanished from Gloria's mind. The journey she began so promptly was a new one to her, and with the first appearance of daylight the first morning she was ready to enjoy it. Unlike Aunt Em, she was fresh and vigorous after the night in the sleeper; she did not even dream of her recent discoveries in streets. No old-faced little boys in reefed man-trousers appealed to her sleeping pity.

“Best thing we could have done,” whispered Uncle Em to his wife, watching the girl's animated face. “But I'm afraid it's going to be tough on you, my dear.”

“Never mind me,” smiled back his wife cheerfully. She was at that moment warm and wearied, with a dull headache with which to begin the day. But Aunt Em was the sort of woman who courts discomforts which to her loved ones masquerade in the guise of comforts. She had never been given a daughter of her own to make sacrifices for; she must make the most of Gloria.

“I wish you liked to travel as well as Gloria and I do, my dear.” His wife did not like to travel at all; it was a species of torture to her.

“I like to have you and Gloria like it,” she smiled.

A few days after the newness of Cheyenne had worn off a little, Gloria sat in the window of her hotel room writing a letter. It had come to her suddenly that she would write to the District Nurse. It would at any rate be something interesting to do, and if the letter elicited an answer, how very interesting that would be! What kind of letters did District Nurses write?

Gloria had gone back, in convenient interstices of her new life in this strange city, to mild musings on streets where poverty dwelt undisguised. At this distance, Dinney and little Hunkie were faint wraiths rather than realities.

Gloria's musings now were tinted with a comfortable impersonality that robbed them of the power to sting. It was more as if she had recently read a story full of pathos, whose chief characters were named Hunkie and Dinney, and whose background was a dreary street. She would tell the story to the District Nurse and perhaps evoke a sequel to it from her.