he is
dead.' Yet we _know_ that her husband is dead. She still expects some
one."

"Maybe," said Esther, arguing from her own state of mind to that of her
friend, "maybe she expects a Stork mit babies."

The woman caught Esther by the shoulders and peered down into her eyes.
"So they have been talking to you," she said with immense scorn. "Oh,
those women!"

"Nobody ain't told me nothings," Esther answered. "I don't _know_
nothings. Only I thinks it in mine heart. And anyway, the first baby
what comes here is mine. I writes on the Central Park a letter over it.
It's going to be a boy mit from-gold hair."

"Well," snorted the nurse with some professional pique, "it's good you
got _that_ settled."

Late that night Esther awoke in her little outgrown crib. A familiar
series of sounds had disturbed her: the arrival of the doctor. So the
lady mit the from-gold hair was presumably worse. The doctor's steps
mounted into the darkness and silence of the sleeping house, and the
clock in Mrs. Moriarty's room struck two. Esther lay wide-eyed in the
dark and waited for the sound of the doctor's return, but she heard
nothing except the far-away clang and shriek of an occasional cable-car
and the sound of stealthy, hurrying feet upon the sidewalk. She sat up,
and in the dim reflection from the electric light on the street corner
she distinguished the shapeless bulk that was her sleeping father. Jacob
had only recently come in from his quest, and he slept the sleep of
exhaustion.

Cold had no terrors for her; she was clad, feet and all, in an Esquimaux
garment of brilliant pink flannel of Mrs. Moriarty's contriving.

And still the doctor did not come down. Esther climbed to the floor and
noiselessly unlocked the door. In the hall a deadly quiet served as a
background for Mr. Finkelstein's snoring. And then Esther's summons
came. Shrill and clear from the darkness above dropped the cry of a
new-born child. Hers! The Stork had blundered again.

"Oh, my!" wailed Esther, "ain't Storks the fools? In all my world I
ain't never seen how he makes mistakes. I told him just as plain: Second
Floor Front. Und extra he goes und maybe wakes up the lady mit the
from-gold hair over it. She's got it hard enough 'out no babies
yelling."

As Esther toiled toward the sound, she realized that yet another
mistake had been made, it was 'a loud one.' Now what would her father
say--and Mrs. Moriarty? But this was no time for such questioning. Her