rt of parlour people would like if they got married,
married to someone who was doing very well in the shoe business, for
example.

These allusions deepened the colour in Rose's happy face; she had been
"going" for some three months with an attractive young man who exactly
met these specifications--not her first admirer, not noticeable for any
especial quality, yet Rose and Norma, and Kate, too, felt in their souls
that Rose's hour had come. Young Harry Redding was a big, broad, rather
inarticulate fellow, whose humble calling was not the more attractive to
the average young woman because he supported his mother by it. But he
suited Rose, more, he seemed wonderful to Rose, and because her dreams
had always been humble and self-sacrificing, Harry was a thousand times
more than she had dreamed. She felt herself the luckiest girl in the
world.

Kate sat at the head of her table, and Wolf at the foot. Rose, a gentle,
quiet copy of her handsome mother, was nearest the kitchen door, to
which she made constant flying trips. Norma was opposite Rose, and by
falling back heavily could tip her entire chair against the sideboard,
from which she extracted forks or salt or candy, as the case might be.
The telephone was in the dining-room, Wolf's especial responsibility,
and Mrs. Sheridan herself occasionally left the table for calls to the
front door or the dumb-waiter.

To-night, after supper, the girls flew through their share of
clearing-up. It never weighed very heavily upon them; they usually began
the process of piling and scraping dishes before they left the table,
Rose whisking the tablecloth into its drawer as Norma bumped through the
swinging door with the last dishes, and Kate halfway through the washing
even then. Chattering and busy, they hustled the hot plates onto their
shelves, rattled the hot plated ware into its basket, clanked saucepans,
and splashed water. Not fifteen minutes after the serving of the dessert
the last signs of the meal had been obliterated, and Kate was guilty of
what the girls called "making excuses" to linger in the kitchen. She was
mixing cereal, storing cold potatoes and cut bread, soaking dish-towels.
But these things did not belong to the duties of Norma and Rose, and the
younger girl could flash with a free conscience to the little room she
shared with Rose. Wolf had called out for a companion, they were going
to take a walk and see what the blizzard had done!

Norma washed her face, the