was left to face her mother's obstinate resistance alone. She
felt suddenly very desolate, very weak, and very poor. "What if mother
should die?" she asked herself.

Gregg was standing before the counter talking with Lize as Lee returned,
and he said, with a broad smile: "I've just been saying I'd take this
hotel off your mother's hands provided you went with it."

In the mouths of some men these words would have been harmless enough, but
coming from the tongue of one whose life could only be obscurely hinted at
the jest was an insult. The girl shuddered with repulsion, and Lize spoke
out:

"Now see here, Bullfrog, I'm dead on the hoof and all that, but neither
you nor any other citizen like you can be funny with my girl. She's not
for you. Now that's final! She ain't your kind."

Gregg's smile died into a gray, set smirk, and his eyes took on a steely
glint. He knew when the naked, unadorned truth was spoken to him. Words
came slowly to his lips, but he said: "You'll be glad to come to me for
help some day--both of you."

"Oh, get along! You don't hold no mortgage on me," retorted Lize,
contemptuously, and turned to Lee. "I'm hungry. Where's that grub chart o'
mine?"

Lee brought the doctor's page of notes and read it through, while her
mother snorted at intervals: "Hah! dry toast, weak tea, no coffee, no
alcohol. Huh! I might as well starve! Eggs--fish--milk! Why didn't he say
boiled live lobsters and champagne? I tell you right now, I'm not going to
go into that kind of a game. If I die I'm going to die eating what I blame
please."

The struggle had begun. With desperate courage Lee fought, standing
squarely in the rut of her mother's daily habit. "You must not hive up
here any longer," she insisted; "you must get out and walk and ride. I can
take care of the house--at least, till we can sell it."

It was like breaking the pride of an athlete, but little by little she
forced upon her mother a realization of her true condition, and at last
Lize consented to offer the business for sale. Then she wept (for the
first time in years), and the sight moved her daughter much as the sobs of
a strong man would have done.

She longed for the presence of Ross Cavanagh at this moment, when all her
little world seemed tumbling into ruin; and almost in answer to her
wordless prayer came a messenger from the little telephone office: "Some
one wants to talk to you."

She answered this call hurriedly, thinking at first tha