verything is changed now. Mamma's going to turn over such a new leaf
that everything is going to be happiness in this family."

"Dearest, if you knew how happy it makes me to hear you say that."

"Alma, look at me."

"Mamma, you--you frighten me."

"You like Louis Latz, don't you, Alma?"

"Why, yes, mamma. Very much."

"We can't all be young and handsome like Leo, can we?"

"You mean--?"

"I mean that finer and better men than Louis Latz aren't lying around
loose. A man who treated his mother like a queen and who worked himself
up from selling newspapers on the street to a millionaire."

"Mamma?"

"Yes, baby. He asked me to-night. Come to me, Alma; stay with me close.
He asked me to-night."

"What?"

"You know. Haven't you seen it coming for weeks? I have."

"Seen what?"

"Don't make mamma come out and say it. For eight years I've been as
grieving a widow to a man as a woman could be. But I'm human, Alma, and
he--asked me to-night."

There was a curious pallor came over Miss Samstag's face, as if smeared
there by a hand.

"Asked you what?"

"Alma, it don't mean I'm not true to your father as I was the day I
buried him in that blizzard back there, but could you ask for a finer,
steadier man than Louis Latz? It looks out of his face."

"Mamma, you--What--are you saying?"

"Alma?"

There lay a silence between them that took on the roar of a simoon and
Miss Samstag jumped then from her mother's embrace, her little face
stiff with the clench of her mouth.

"Mamma--you--No--no! Oh, mamma--oh--!"

A quick spout of hysteria seemed to half strangle Mrs. Samstag so that
she slanted backward, holding her throat.

"I knew it. My own child against me. O God! Why was I born? My own child
against me!"

"Mamma--you can't marry him. You can't marry--anybody."

"Why can't I marry anybody? Must I be afraid to tell my own child when
a good man wants to marry me and give us both a good home? That's my
thanks for making my child my first consideration--before I accepted
him."

"Mamma, you didn't accept him. Darling, you wouldn't do a--thing like
that!"

Miss Samstag's voice thickened up then quite frantically into a little
scream that knotted in her throat, and she was suddenly so small and
stricken that, with a gasp for fear she might crumple up where she
stood, Mrs. Samstag leaned forward, catching her again by the sash.

"Alma!"

It was only for an instant, however. Suddenly Miss Samstag was her
c