f her new home and what she saw inspired
her more with curiosity than dismay. The little girl had been reared
from babyhood in an atmosphere of luxury; through environment she had
become an aristocrat from the top of her head to the tips of her toes;
this introduction to shabbiness was unique, nor could she yet
understand that such surroundings were familiar to many who battle for
existence in a big city. The very fact that her father's humble flat
was "different" made it far more interesting to the child than new
apartments such as she had been accustomed to. Therefore she had no
thought, at this time, of protest. Her own little room contained a
small iron bed, one straight chair with a wooden bottom and a
broken-legged dresser over which hung a cracked mirror. The small rag
rug was worn threadbare.

While she stood in the doorway of this room, solemnly regarding it, her
father said over her shoulder:

"You won't need both those big trunks here, I'm sure. I'll store them
somewhere in the studio. Covered with drapes, they won't be noticed. I
can't imagine what that woman packed them with."

"My dresses," replied Alora. "Even then, I left a lot at the Voltaire,
for the maids to sell or give away. Mamma used to send them to the
Salvation Army."

"Two trunks of dresses ought to last for a good many years," he
remarked in a reflective tone.

"Oh, no indeed," said Lory. "Miss Gorham was about to engage a
dressmaker for me when--when--you said we'd go away. I'm growing fast,
you know, and I was to have a dozen or fifteen summer frocks made, and
a lot of lingerie."

"Then we moved just in time to save that expense," he declared, setting
his stern jaws together. "There's been a terrible waste of money
through that woman Gorham. We're well rid of her."

He turned away to the studio and the child followed him there. He
turned on the electric lights, which were not very bright, and Alora
took a look at the workroom and thought it seemed more comfortable than
the other rooms of the flat.

Her father began dusting and arranging half a dozen paintings of
various sizes, mounted on stretchers. None was finished; some were
scarcely begun. Lory tried to see what they represented. Perhaps she
had inherited from her mother a bit of artistic instinct; if so, it was
that which prompted her to shrug her small shoulders slightly and then
turn away to the window.

In the dimly lighted street outside a man drove up with the baggage.