-up, all right, and she's a great one for
a josh with the boys, but she's as straight as a string! You'll find
that she's got some good reason for this!"

"Well, she'd better have!" Julia said sulkily. "I'm going out to see my
grandmother to-morrow and see if she knows anything!"

But she really gave less thought to her mother than to the stinging
memory of Barbara Toland's generosity and Carter Hazzard's deception.
She settled down contentedly enough, sharing the room with Connie and
Rose, and sharing their secrets, and her visit to old Mrs. Cox was
indefinitely postponed. The girls drifted about together, in and out of
theatres, in and out of restaurants and hotels, reading cheap theatrical
magazines, talking of nothing but their profession. The days were long
and dull, the evenings feverish; Julia liked it all. She had no very
high ideal of home life; she did not mind the disorder of their room,
the jumbled bureau drawers, the chairs and tables strewn with garments,
the fly-specked photographs nailed against the walls. It was a
comfortable, irresponsible, diverting existence, at its worst.

Emeline did not write her daughter for nearly two weeks, but Julia was
not left in doubt of her mother's moral and physical safety for that
time. Only two or three days after Emeline's disappearance Julia was
called upon by a flashily dressed, coarse-featured man of perhaps forty
who introduced himself--in a hoarse voice heavy with liquor--as Dick
Palmer.

"I used to know your Pop when you's only a kid," said the caller, "and I
know where your Mamma is now--she's gone down to Santa Rosa, see?"

"What'd she go there for?" Julia demanded clearly.

Mr. Palmer cast an agitated glance about Mrs. Tarbury's dreadful
drawing-room, and lowered his voice confidentially:

"Well, d'ye see--here's how it is! Your Papa's down there in Santa Rosa.
I run acrost him in a boarding-house a few days ago, and d'ye see--he's
sick. That's right," added the speaker heavily, "he's sick."

"Dying?" said Julia dramatically.

"No, he ain't dying. It's like this," pursued the narrator, still with
his air of secrecy, "there's a party there that runs the
boarding-house--her name's Lottie Clute, she's had it for years, and
she's got on to the fact that George is insured for nine thousand
dollars, d'ye see? Well, she's got him to promise to make the policy
over to her."

"Ha!" said Julia, interested at last.

"Well, d'ye see?" said Mr. Palmer triumph