his voice. He spent more than he could
afford on a large streamer, meant to be fastened across the rear of the
automobile, which said, "Excuse our dust," and was inconsolable when
Palmer refused to let him use it.

K. had yielded to Anna's insistence, and was boarding as well as
rooming at the Page house. The Street, rather snobbish to its occasional
floating population, was accepting and liking him. It found him tender,
infinitely human. And in return he found that this seemingly empty eddy
into which he had drifted was teeming with life. He busied himself with
small things, and found his outlook gradually less tinged with despair.
When he found himself inclined to rail, he organized a baseball
club, and sent down to everlasting defeat the Linburgs, consisting of
cash-boys from Linden and Hofburg's department store.

The Rosenfelds adored him, with the single exception of the head of
the family. The elder Rosenfeld having been "sent up," it was K. who
discovered that by having him consigned to the workhouse his family
would receive from the county some sixty-five cents a day for his labor.
As this was exactly sixty-five cents a day more than he was worth to
them free, Mrs. Rosenfeld voiced the pious hope that he be kept there
forever.

K. made no further attempt to avoid Max Wilson. Some day they would meet
face to face. He hoped, when it happened, they two might be alone; that
was all. Even had he not been bound by his promise to Sidney, flight
would have been foolish. The world was a small place, and, one way and
another, he had known many people. Wherever he went, there would be the
same chance.

And he did not deceive himself. Other things being equal,--the eddy
and all that it meant--, he would not willingly take himself out of his
small share of Sidney's life.

She was never to know what she meant to him, of course. He had scourged
his heart until it no longer shone in his eyes when he looked at her.
But he was very human--not at all meek. There were plenty of days when
his philosophy lay in the dust and savage dogs of jealousy tore at it;
more than one evening when he threw himself face downward on the bed
and lay without moving for hours. And of these periods of despair he was
always heartily ashamed the next day.

The meeting with Max Wilson took place early in September, and under
better circumstances than he could have hoped for.

Sidney had come home for her weekly visit, and her mother's condition