tailor and the doctor, and in another month he would be engineer on
probation. His inspiration left him at the church door. He walked
restlessly up to the station and with a crowd of excursionists took his
train to West Albany. Luncheon baskets, crying babies, oranges, peanuts,
and the rest of the excursion paraphernalia filled the car. Fairfax
looked over the crowd, and down by the farther door caught sight of a
familiar face and figure.

It was Molly Shannon coming back to Nut Street for Easter. For several
months the girl had been working in the Troy collar factory, and drawn
by the most powerful of magnets was reluctantly returning to Nut Street
on her holiday. Molly had no new dress for Easter. She hadn't even a new
hat. Her long hours in the factory and her state of unhappy, unrequited
love, had worn away the crude brilliance of her form. She was pale,
thinner, and in her cheap dress, her old hat with its faded ribbon, with
her hands clasped over a little imitation leather handbag, she sat
utterly alone, as youth and beauty should never be.

Fairfax limped down the car and took his place by her side.

CHAPTER XII

Mrs. Kenny, with prodigal hospitality, took Molly in for over Sunday.
Fairfax walked alongside of her to his boarding-house, carrying the
imitation leather bag, talking to her, laughing with her, calling the
colour back and making her eyes bright. He found himself, with his young
lady, before the threshold of Kenny's hotel. "Gents only." Whether this
was the rule or an idea only, Fairfax wondered, for Molly was not the
first one of the gentler sex who had been cordially entertained in the
boarding-house! Mrs. Kenny's sister and her sister's child, her mother
and aunts three, had successively come down on the hotel during
Fairfax's passing, and been lavishly entertained, anywhere and
everywhere, even under Fairfax's feet, for he had come out one morning
from his door to find two little girls sleeping on a mattress in the
hall.

All his lifelong Fairfax retained an adoration for landladies. They had
such tempting opportunities to display qualities that console and
ennoble, and the landladies with whom he had come in contact took
advantage of their opportunities! It didn't seem enough to wait five
weeks for a chap to pay up, when one's own rent was due, but the
landlady must buy chicken at ruinous prices when a chap was ill, and
make soup and put rice in it, and carry it steaming, flecked wit