at house is. Not at
the back, anyway. Never saw even a garbage-pail."

And then for two weeks he sat with Mother in the sun and watched the
motors go by.

They were almost ready to admit, now, that their venture was a complete
failure; that they were ruined; that they didn't know what they would
do, with no savings and a rainy day coming.

They let their maid go. They gave the grocer smaller and smaller orders
for bread and butter and cheese--and even these orders were invariably
too large for the little custom that came their way.

For a week Father concealed the fact that Mrs. Vance Carter would be
coming--not now, but very soon. Then he had to tell Mother the secret to
save her from prostrating worry. They talked always of that coming
miracle as they sat with hand desperately clutching hand in the evening;
they nearly convinced themselves that Mrs. Carter would send her
friends. September was almost here, and it was too late for Mrs.
Carter's influence to help them this year, but they trusted that
somehow, by the magic of her wealth and position, she would enable them
to get through the winter and find success during the next year.

They developed a remarkable skill in seeing her car coming far down the
road. When either of them saw it the other was summoned, and they waited
tremblingly. But the landaulet always passed, with Mrs. Carter staring
straight ahead, gray-haired and hook-nosed; sometimes with Miss Margaret
Carter, whose softly piquant little nose would in time be hooked like
her mother's. Father's treacherous ally the chauffeur never even looked
at "The T Room." Sometimes Father wondered if the chauffeur knew just
where the house was; perhaps he had never noticed it. He planned to wave
and attract the chauffeur's attention, but in face of the prodigious
Mrs. Carter he never dared to carry out the plan.

September 1st. The Applebys had given up hope of miracles. They were
making up their minds to notify Mr. Pilkings, of Pilkings & Son's Sixth
Avenue Standard Shoe Parlor, that Father again wanted the job he had
held for so many years.

They must leave the rose-arbor for the noise of that most alien of
places, their native New York.

Mother was in the kitchen; Father at the front door, aimlessly
whittling. He looked up, saw the Vance Carter motor approach. He
shrugged his shoulders, growled, "Let her go to the dickens."

Then the car had stopped, and Mrs. Vance Carter and Miss Margaret Carter
had in