a trifle.

"Fine!" said he. "Let's go in. Maybe I can sleep--I'd like to sleep."

"What kept you so late?" asked Aurora Lane. She hurried in ahead of
him.

CHAPTER IX

THE OTHER WOMAN CONCERNED

The sultry night at last was broken by a breathless dawn, the sun rising
a red ball over the farm lands beyond the massed maple trees of the
town. Not much refreshed by the attempt at sleep in the stuffy little
rooms, Don and his mother met once more in the little kitchen
dining-room where she had prepared the simple breakfast.

He did not know, as he picked at the crisp bacon strips, that bacon, or
even eggs, made an unusual breakfast in his mother's household. He
trifled with his cereal and his coffee, happily too considerate to
mention the lack of butter and cream, but grumblingly sensible all the
time that the bread was no longer fresh. He was living in a new world,
the world of the very poor. His time had not yet been sufficient therein
to give him much understanding.

He looked about him at the scantily furnished rooms, and in spite of
himself there rose before his mind pictures he had known these last few
years--wide green parks, with oaks and elms, stately buildings draped
with ivy, flowers about, and everywhere the air of quiet ease. He
recalled the fellowship of fresh-cheeked roistering youths like himself,
full of the zest of life, youth well-clad, with the stamp of having
known the good things of life; young women well-clad, well-appointed,
also. Books, art, the touch of the wide world of thought, the quiet, the
comfort, the beauty, the physical well-being of everything about
him--these had been a daily experience for him for years. He
unthinkingly had supposed that all life, all the world, must continue
much like this. He had supposed, had he given it any thought at all,
that the last meager bill in his pockets when he started home would in
some magic way always remain unneeded, always unspent. He had
opportunity waiting for him in his profession, and he knew he would get
on. Never before in all his life had he known the widow's cruse.

So this was life, then--this little room, this tawdry, sullen town, this
hot and lifeless air, this hopelessly banal and uninteresting place that
had been his mother's home all these years--this was his beginning of
actual life! The first lesson he had had yesterday; the next, yet more
bitter, he must have today. The uninviting little kitchen seemed to him
the cente