erstanding.

But in families such as Tessie's, demonstration is a thing to be
ashamed of; affection a thing to conceal. Tessie's father was janitor
of the Chippewa High School. A powerful man, slightly crippled by
rheumatism, loquacious, lively, fond of his family, proud of his neat
gray frame house and his new cement sidewalk and his carefully tended
yard and garden patch. In all her life Tessie had never seen a caress
exchanged between her parents.

Nowadays Ma Golden had little occasion for finding fault with Tessie's
evening diversion. She no longer had cause to say, "Always gaddin'
downtown, or over to Cora's or somewhere, like you didn't have a home
to stay in. You ain't been in a evening this week, only when you
washed your hair."

Tessie had developed a fondness for sunsets viewed from the back
porch--she who had thought nothing of dancing until three and rising at
half-past six to go to work.

Stepping about in the kitchen after supper, her mother would eye the
limp, relaxed figure on the back porch with a little pang at her heart.
She would come to the screen door, or even out to the porch on some
errand or other--to empty the coffee grounds, to turn the row of
half-ripe tomatoes reddening on the porch railing, to flap and hang up
a damp tea towel.

"Ain't you goin' out, Tess?"

"No."

"What you want to lop around here for? Such a grant evening. Why don't
you put on your things and run downtown, or over to Cora's or
somewhere, hm?"

"What for?"--listlessly.

"What for! What does anybody go out for!"

"I don't know."

If they could have talked it over together, these two, the girl might
have found relief. But the family shyness of their class was too
strong upon them. Once Mrs. Golden had said, in an effort at sympathy,
"Person'd think Chuck Mory was the only one who'd gone to war an' the
last fella left in the world."

A grim flash of the old humor lifted the corners of the wide mouth.
"He is. Who's there left? Stumpy Gans, up at the railroad crossing?
Or maybe Fatty Weiman, driving the garbage. Guess I'll doll up this
evening and see if I can't make a hit with one of them."

She relapsed into bitter silence. The bottom had dropped out of Tessie
Golden's world.

In order to understand the Tessie of today one would have to know the
Tessie of six months ago--Tessie the impudent, the life-loving. Tessie
Golden could say things to the escapement-room foreman that anyone else
woul