was the matter of an alibi.

"I might tell the folks at home anything and they'd believe it
because they'd want to believe it," said the Avenue Girl. "But
there's the neighbours. I was pretty wild at home. And--there's a
fellow who wanted to marry me--he knew how sick I was of the old
place and how I wanted my fling. His name was Jerry. We'd have to
show Jerry."

The Probationer worried a great deal about this matter of the alibi.
It had to be a clean slate for the folks back home, and especially
for Jerry. She took her anxieties out walking several times on her
off-duty, but nothing seemed to come of it. She walked on the Avenue
mostly, because it was near and she could throw a long coat over her
blue dress. And so she happened to think of the woman the girl had
lived with.

"She got her into all this," thought the Probationer. "She's just
got to see her out."

It took three days' off-duty to get her courage up to ringing the
doorbell of the house with the bowed shutters, and after she had
rung it she wanted very much to run and hide; but she thought of the
girl and everything going for nothing for the want of an alibi, and
she stuck. The negress opened the door and stared at her.

"She's dead, is she?" she asked.

"No. May I come in? I want to see your mistress."

The negress did not admit her, however. She let her stand in the
vestibule and went back to the foot of a staircase.

"One of these heah nurses from the hospital!" she said. "She wants
to come in and speak to you."

"Let her in, you fool!" replied a voice from above stairs.

The rest was rather confused. Afterward the Probationer remembered
putting the case to the stout woman who had claimed the parrot and
finding it difficult to make her understand.

"Don't you see?" she finished desperately. "I want her to go
home--to her own folks. She wants it too. But what are we going to
say about these last two years?"

The stout woman sat turning over her rings. She was most
uncomfortable. After all, what had she done? Had she not warned them
again and again about having lighted cigarettes lying round.

"She's in bad shape, is she?"

"She may recover, but she'll be badly scarred--not her face, but her
chest and shoulders."

That was another way of looking at it. If the girl was scarred----

"Just what do you want me to do?" she asked. Now that it was down
to brass tacks and no talk about home and mother, she was more
comfortable.

"If you cou