ur-room flat--all these urban adjuncts seemed as natural to her as
though she had been bred in the midst of them.

She and Minnie used to spend whole days in useless shopping. Theirs was
a respectable neighborhood of well-paid artisans, bookkeepers, and
small shopkeepers. The women did their own housework in drab garments
and soiled boudoir caps that hid a multitude of unkempt heads. They
seemed to find a great deal of time for amiable, empty gabbling From
seven to four you might see a pair of boudoir caps leaning from
opposite bedroom windows, conversing across back porches, pausing in
the task of sweeping front steps, standing at a street corner, laden
with grocery bundles. Minnie wasted hours in what she called "running
over to Ma's for a minute." The two quarreled a great deal, being so
nearly of a nature. But the very qualities that combated each other
seemed, by some strange chemical process, to bring them together as
well.

"I'm going downtown today to do a little shopping," Minnie would say.
"Do you want to come along, Ma?"

"What you got to get?"

"Oh, I thought I'd look at a couple little dresses for Pearlie."

"When I was your age I made every stitch you wore."

"Yeh, I bet they looked like it, too. This ain't the farm. I got all
I can do to tend to the house, without sewing."

"I did it. I did the housework and the sewin' and cookin', an'
besides----"

"A swell lot of housekeepin' you did. You don't need to tell me."

The bickering grew to a quarrel. But in the end they took the downtown
el together. You saw them, flushed of face, with twitching fingers,
indulging in a sort of orgy of dime spending in the five-and-ten-cent
store on the wrong side of State Street.

They pawed over bolts of cheap lace and bits of stuff in the stifling
air of the crowded place. They would buy a sack of salted peanuts from
the great mound in the glass case, or a bag of the greasy pink candy
piled in profusion on the counter, and this they would munch as they
went.

They came home late, fagged and irritable, and supplemented their
hurried dinner with hastily bought food from the near-by delicatessen.

Thus ran the life of ease for Ben Westerveld, retired farmer. And so
now he lay impatiently in bed, rubbing a nervous forefinger over the
edge of the sheet and saying to himself that, well, here was another
day. What day was it? L'see now. Yesterday was--yesterday. A little
feeling of panic came over hi