rang up to detain her.

"Don't go, Miss Goucher! Your views are really most interesting--though,
as you say, not widely accepted. Certainly not by me. Your plan of a
lethal chamber for weak sisters and brothers strikes me as--well,
drastic. Do sit down."

Again Miss Goucher perched primly upright on the outer edge of the chair
beside my own. "I felt bound to state my views truthfully," she said,
"since you asked for them. But I never intrude them upon others. I'm not
a social rebel, Mr. Hunt. I lack self-confidence for that. When I differ
from the received opinion I always suspect that I am quite wrong.
Probably I am in this case. But I think society would agree with me that
Sonia is not a fit maid for Susan."

"Beyond a shadow of doubt," I assented. "But may I ask on what grounds
you suspect Sonia?"

"It is certainly your right," replied Miss Goucher; "but if you insist
upon an answer I shall have to give notice."

"Then I shall certainly not insist."

"Thank you, Mr. Hunt," said Miss Goucher, rising once more. "I
appreciate this." And she walked from the room.

It was the next afternoon that Susan burst into my study without
knocking--a breach of manners which she had recently learned to conquer,
so the irruption surprised me. But I noted instantly that Susan's
agitation had carried her far beyond all thought for trifles. Never had
I seen her like this. Her whole being was vibrant with emotional stress.

"Ambo!" she cried, all but slamming the door behind her. "Sonia mustn't
go! I won't let her go! You and Miss Goucher may think what you
please--I won't, Ambo! It's wicked! You don't want Sonia to be like
Tilly Jaretski, do you?"

"Like Tilly Jaretski?" My astonishment was so great that I babbled the
unfamiliar name merely to gain time, collect my senses.

"Yes!" urged Susan, almost leaping to my side, and seizing my arm with
tense fingers. "She'll be just like Tilly was, along State Street--after
her baby came. Tilly wasn't a bit like Pearl, Ambo; and Sonia isn't
either! But she's going to have a baby, too, Ambo, like Tilly."

With a wrench of my entire nervous system I, in one agonizing second,
completely dislocated the prejudices of a lifetime, and rose to the
situation confronting me. O Hillhouse Avenue, right at both ends! How
little you had prepared me for this precocious knowledge of
life--knowledge that utterly degrades or most wonderfully saves--which
these children, out toward the wrong end of th