. Heaven help us if they get in power!"

"But there's always a final reckoning ... like the Vigilance Committee,"
said Francisco, slowly. "Somehow, I feel that there's a shakeup coming."

"A moral earthquake, eh?" laughed Jeanne. "I wouldn't want to have a
real one, with all of our new skyscrapers."

* * * * *

After dinner Stanley and his son strolled downtown together. Exercise
and diet had been recommended, Francisco was acquiring embonpoint. Frank
was enthusiastic over the new motor carriages called automobiles.

Robert had one of them--the gasoline type--with a _chauffeur_, as the
French called the drivers of such machines. Bertha Larned had an
"electric coupe," very handsome and costly, with plate-glass windows on
three sides. She drove it herself. Frank sometimes encountered it
downtown, looking like a moving glass cage, with the two women in it.
Mrs. Larned, the aunt, always had a slightly worried expression, and
Bertha, as she steered the thing through a tangle of horse-drawn
traffic, wore a singularly determined look.

There were cable cars on most of the streets; a few electric lines which
ran much more swiftly. But people deemed the latter dangerous. There was
much popular sentiment against electrizing Market street. The United
Railways, which had succeeded the old Market Street Railway Company, was
in disfavor. There were rumors of illicit bargains with the Supervisors
for the granting of proposed new franchises. Young Partridge made much
of this. He warned the public that it was about to be "betrayed." But
his prophetic eloquence availed him little. Schmitz and all the Union
Labor candidates won by a great majority.

* * * * *

Frank sought Aleta at the Dusty Doughnut some months later. He was very
tired, for the past few days had brought a multitude of tasks. He had
counted on Aleta's smile. It seldom failed to cheer him, to restore the
normal balance of his mind. But, though she came, the smile was absent.
There was a faint ghost of it now and again; a harried look about the
eyes. Frank thought there was a mistiness which hinted recent tears.

He laid a hand sympathetically on hers. "What is it, little girl?"

She would not tell him. Her mother was ill. But the trouble did not lie
there. Frank was sure. She had borne that burden long and
uncomplainingly. Aleta had an ingenue part now at the Alcazar. Only once
or twice a week did she