iters ... the newest
play ... then more little tables, more wheedling, coaxing music, more
hovering head-waiters, dancing.... The boarding-house keeper told herself,
comfortably, that it would never do for _her_, and pushed a tolerant
curiosity back into the ragbag of her mind, and the Settlement worker
tucked in her lips and reminded herself that there would be undernourished
children, _hungry_ children, not a mile from where Miss Vail would be
eating out-of-season delicacies, and thanked her God that she was not as
other women.

Michael Daragh came into the room an instant before Jane did. She was
flushed and bright-eyed and smiling. "Well! I'll have to _fly_! I won't
be here for dinner, Mrs. Hills,--I'm sorry, but it seems this is a
rather special party to-night."

"It's your kind of clam chowder, too," said Mrs. Hills, shaking her head.

"Oh, what a shame! But save mine for tomorrow's lunch,--I adore it warmed
over! Here, Michael Daragh"--she opened her brown, beaded bag with its
high lights of orange and gold--"catch!" She tossed the little suede
purse to him. "That's exactly the way I feel to-night, scattering largess
to the multitude, regally pitching purses about! Take what you want--all
you want--for that case! I _must_ fly!" She looked at her wrist watch.
"Mrs. Hills, will you let Mabel come and do me up in twenty minutes? See
you all at breakfast!" She ran out of the room and they heard her swift
feet on the stair.

The boarding-house keeper beamed. Jane Vail was her link with the world.
"I declare, she's a marvel to me! Wouldn't you think she'd be dead on her
feet and want to crawl into bed quick's ever she had her supper? She
won't close an eye before two o'clock in the morning if she does then,
but she'll be down to breakfast, right on the dot, fresh as paint, and
out for her walk, rain, hail or snow, and then she'll hammer that
typewriter all the forenoon!"

"Of course," said Emma Ellis in her small, smothered voice, "Miss Vail
_often_ takes a little nap in the afternoon...."

Mrs. Hills was not to be diverted from her star boarder's glories. "Well,
it didn't take that Mr. Rodney Harrison very long to get in action, did
it?"

"It did not, indeed," said the Irishman, cheerfully. "How long till
dinner, Mrs. Hills? Half an hour? Then I'll be stepping up to my room for
a letter is keening to be written."

The two women were silent until they heard him mounting the stairs to the
third floor. "You see