d. Julia digested the fact in
frowning silence.

"Grandma," said she presently, "did you ever have enough money?"

Mrs. Cox, now drinking her tea from a saucer, smiled toothlessly.

"Oh, sure," said she, with a cackle of laughter, "Why, there's nobody
knows it, but I'm rich!" But immediately the sorry joke lost flavour.
The old woman sighed, and into her wrinkled face and filmed eyes there
came her usual look of patient and unintelligent endurance. "I've never
yet had a dollar that didn't have to do two dollars' work," said she,
suddenly, in a mighty voice, staring across the kitchen, and lifting one
hand as if she were taking an oath. "I've never laid down at night when
I wasn't so tired my back was splitting. I've never had no thanks and no
ease--the sixty years of my life! There's some people meant to be rich,
Julia, and some that'll be poor the longest day of their lives, and
that's all there is to it!"

"I know--but it don't seem fair," Julia mused. She presently went on an
errand for her grandmother, and came back with sausages and fresh pulpy
bread and large spongy crullers from the grocery. By this time the windy
summer twilight was closing in, and the homegoing labourers and factory
hands were filing home through the dirty streets. Julia found her two
cousins in the lamp-lighted kitchen, Evelyn rather heavy and coarse
looking, Marguerite reedy and thin, both wearing an unwholesome pallor.
They made a little event of her coming, and the three girls chatted
gayly enough throughout the meal, which was eaten at the kitchen table
and washed down with strong tea.

Julia's grandfather, a gnarled old man in a labourer's rough clothes,
who reeked of whiskey, mumbled his meal in silence, and afterward went
into the room known as the parlour, snarling as he went that some one
must come in and light his lamp. Julia went in with Evelyn to the rather
pitiful room: a red rug was on the floor, and there were two chairs and
a cheap little table, besides the big chair in which the old man settled
himself.

"Ain't he going out, Grandma?" said Evelyn, returning to the kitchen,
and exchanging a rueful look with Marguerite.

"Well, I thought he was!" Mrs. Cox made a pilgrimage to the parlour
door, and returned confident. "He'll go out!" she said reassuringly.

"Comp'ny coming?" Julia asked smilingly. The other girls giggled and
looked at each other.

"Well, why couldn't Grandpa sit in the kitchen?" the girl asked.
"There'