es, when Julia found her father waylaying her.

"Where y' going?" asked Julia, noticing that he carried a hand bag.

George sat down on the dirty cement steps that connected his dwelling
with the sidewalk, and drew Julia between his knees.

"I've got to go away, baby," said he soberly.

"And ain't choo going to take me to the Park--_never_?" asked Julia, with
a trembling lip.

George freed a lock of her hair that had gotten caught in her collar,
with clumsy, gentle fingers.

"Mama's mad at me, and I'm going away for a while, Babe," said he,
clearing his throat. "But you be a good girl, and I'll come take you to
the Park some day."

Something in the gravity of his tone impressed Julia.

"But I don't want you to go away," she said tearfully. George got up
hastily.

"Come on, walk with Pop to the car," he commanded, and Julia trotted
contentedly beside him to Market Street. There she gave him a child's
soft, impersonal kiss, staring up at the buildings opposite as she did
so. George jumped on a cable car, wedged his bag under his knees as he
took a seat on the dummy, and looked back at the little figure that was
moving toward the dingy opening of O'Farrell Street, and at the spring
sunshine, bright on the child's hair.

CHAPTER II

In summer the rear parlour that was Mrs. Page's bedroom was a rather dim
and dreary place; such light as it had fell through one long, high
window that gave only upon a narrow air shaft; it was only in mid-July
that the actual sunlight--a bright and fleeting triangle--touched the
worn red carpet and the curly-maple bed. In winter the window gave
almost no light at all. Julia dressed by gaslight ten months out of the
year, and had to sit up in her warm blankets and stare at the clock on a
certain January morning in her fifteenth year, to make sure whether it
said twenty minutes of eleven or five minutes of eight o'clock. It was
five minutes of eight--no mistake about it--but eight o'clock was early
for the Pages, mother and daughter. Julia sighed, and cautiously
stretched forth an arm, a bare, shapely little arm, with bangles on the
round wrist and rings on the smooth fingers, and picked a book from the
floor. Cautiously settling herself on the pillows she plunged into her
novel, now and then pushing back a loose strand of hair, or bringing her
pretty fingernails close to her eyes for an admiring and critical
scrutiny.

An hour passed--another hour. The clock in the front roo