sic," she added, kindly.

"Johnny doesn't like music," said Edith; "well, I don't, either. But I
guess he'll come. He likes food."

Edith effaced herself a good deal in the few days that, her mother
stayed on in Mercer to launch her at Fern Hill; effaced herself, indeed,
so much that Maurice, full of preoccupations of his own, was hardly
aware of her presence!... He had had a scared note from Lily:

Doctor Nelson says he's _awful_ sick, and I've got to have a nurse. I
don't like to, because I can't bear to have anybody do for him but me,
and she charges so much. Makes me tired to see her all fussed up in
white dresses--I suppose it's her laundry I'm paying for! That little
girl he caught it from ought to be sent to a Reformatory. I'm afraid my
new mealer'll go, if she thinks there's anything catching in the house.
I hate to ask you--

The scented, lavender-colored envelope was on Maurice's desk at the
office the morning after Mrs. Houghton and Edith arrived. When he had
read it, and torn it into minute scraps, Maurice had something else to
think of than Edith! He knew Lily wouldn't want to leave "her" baby to
go out and cash a money order, and checks were dangerous; so he must
take that trip to Medfield again. "Well," said Maurice--pulled and
jerked out to Maple Street on the leash of an ineradicable sense of
decency--"the devil is getting his money's worth out of _me_!"

He entered No. 16 without turning the clanging bell, for the door was
ajar. Lily was in the entry, talking to the doctor, who gave Mrs. Dale's
"friend" a rather keen look. "Oh, Mr. Curtis, he's _awful_ sick!" Lily
said; she was haggard with fright.

Maurice, swearing to himself for having arrived at that particular
moment, said, coldly, "Too bad."

"Oh, we'll pull him through," the doctor said, with a kind look at Lily.
She caught his hand and kissed it, and burst out crying. The two men
looked at each other--one amused, the other shrinking with disgust at
his own moral squalor. Then from the floor above came a whimpering cry,
and Lily, calling passionately, "Yes, Sweety! Maw's coming!" flew
upstairs.

"I'll look in this evening," Doctor Nelson said, and took himself off,
rubbing the back of his hand on his trousers. "I wonder if there's any
funny business there?" he reflected. But he thought no more about it
until weeks afterward, when he happened, one day, in the bank, to stand
before Maurice, waiting his turn at the teller's window. He said