brewer's wagon, and white faces look after, suddenly famished.

When the familiar pungency of her boarding-house flowed in and round
Mrs. Violet Smith, she paused for a moment and could not push through
the oppression. Then, with the associations of odor crowding in about
her, she stripped herself of her gewgaws, as if here even the tarnished
tinsel of pleasure could have no place, and tiptoed up the weary wind
of three unlighted flights and through the thick staleness of unaired
halls.

At the third landing a broom and a dirty tangled debris of scrub-cloths
lay on the topmost stair, as if an aching slavey had not found the
strength to remove them. They caught the heel of her shoe, pitching her
forward so that she fell sharply against her own door. In the gloom
she paused for a palpitating moment, her hands pressing her breast,
listening; then deposited her laden hat, the little pile of tinsel and
the woolen bear on the floor outside the door.

"Vi! Vi! That you, dear?"

She pulled at her strength and opened the door suddenly, blowing in like
a gale. "It's me, darlin'."

She was suddenly radiant as morning, and a figure on the bed in the far
corner of the dim-lit room raised to greet her with vague, white-sleeved
arms outstretched. She flew to their haven.

"Darlin', darlin', how you feeling?"

"Vi, poor tired little girl!"

"Harry, how you feeling, darlin'? They worked the force all night--first
time ever. How you feeling, darlin'--how?" And she burrowed kisses on
the poor, white face, and then deep into the tiny crib and back again
into the vague white arms. "Oh, my babies, both of you! How you feeling,
darlin'? So worried I've been. And the kid! Oh, God, darlin', I--I been
so busy rightin' stock and all--all night they kept the force. I got
such news, darlin'. We should worry that it's snowing! Such news,
darlin'! The kid, Harry--did Mrs. Quigley bring her milk on time? How
you feeling, darlin'! You 'ain't coughed, have you?"

He kissed her damp hair and turned her face up like a flower, so that
his deep-sunk eyes read into hers. "I 'ain't coughed once since noon,
darlin'. We should worry if it snows is right! A doctor's line of talk
can't knock me out. I can buck up without going South. I 'ain't coughed
once since noon, Vi; I--"

A strangling paroxysm shook him in mockery of his words, and she
crouched low beside the bed, her face etched in the agony of bearing
each rack and pain with him.

"Oh, my dar