uce and
fussy old father's. Vague personal belongings, such as combings,
handkerchiefs, a spectacle case, a hairbrush, were found tucked away in
a desk pigeon-hole, a table drawer, or on the top shelf in the bathroom.

As she pulled the disfiguring blue gingham dust-cap over her hair now,
and rolled her sleeves to her elbows, you would never have dreamed that
Rose was embarking upon her great adventure. You would never have
guessed that the semi-yearly closet cleaning was to give to Rose a
thrill as delicious as it was exquisitely painful. But Rose knew. And so
she teased herself, and tried not to think of the pasteboard box on the
shelf in the hall closet, under the pile of reserve blankets, and told
herself that she would leave that closet until the last, when she would
have to hurry over it.

* * * * *

When you clean closets and bureau drawers thoroughly you have to carry
things out to the back porch and flap them, Rose was that sort of
housekeeper. She leaned over the porch railing and flapped things, so
that the dust motes spun and swirled in the sunshine. Rose's arms worked
up and down energetically, then less energetically, finally ceased their
motion altogether. She leaned idle elbows on the porch railing and gazed
down into the yard below with a look in her eyes such as no squalid
Chicago back yard, with its dusty debris, could summon, even in
spring-time.

The woman next door came out on her back porch that adjoined Rose's. The
day seemed to have her in its spell, too, for in her hand was something
woolly and wintry, and she began to flap it about as Rose had done. She
had lived next door since October, had that woman, but the two had never
exchanged a word, true to the traditions of their city training. Rose
had her doubts of the woman next door. She kept a toy dog which she
aired afternoons, and her kimonos were florid and numerous. Now, as the
eyes of the two women met, Rose found herself saying, "Looks like
summer."

The woman next door caught the scrap of conversation eagerly, hungrily.
"It certainly does! Makes me feel like new clothes, and housecleaning."

"I started to-day!" said Rose, triumphantly.

"Not already!" gasped the woman next door, with the chagrin that only a
woman knows who has let May steal upon her unawares.

From far down the alley sounded a chant, drawing nearer and nearer,
until there shambled into view a decrepit horse drawing a dilapidated
h