tle of
terror for Hattie Mandle. It presented no contrast with the bleakness of
the past. On the day that she came upon him, his head fallen at a
curious angle against the black tin box, his hands, asprawl, clutching
the papers that strewed the table, she was appalled, not at what she
found, but at the leap her heart gave at what she found. Herman Handle's
sudden death was one of the least of the tragedies that trailed in the
wake of the devastating panic.

Thus it was that Hugo Handle, at twenty-three, became the head of a
household. He did not need to seek work. From the time he was seventeen
he had been employed in a large china-importing house, starting as a
stock boy. Brought up under the harsh circumstances of Hugo's youth, a
boy becomes food for the reformatory or takes on the seriousness and
responsibility of middle age. In Hugo's case the second was true. From
his father he had inherited a mathematical mind and a sense of material
values. From his mother, a certain patience and courage, though he never
attained her iron indomitability.

It had been a terrific struggle. His salary at twenty-three was most
modest, but he was getting on. He intended to be a buyer, some day, and
take trips abroad to the great Austrian and French and English china
houses.

The day after the funeral he said to his mother, "Well, now we've got to
get Etta married. But married well. Somebody who'll take care of her."

"You're a good son, Hugo," Mrs. Handle had said.

Hugo shook his head. "It isn't that. If she's comfortable and happy--or
as happy as she knows how to be--she'll never come back. That's what I
want. There's debts to pay, too. But I guess we'll get along."

They did get along, but at snail's pace. There followed five years of
economy so rigid as to make the past seem profligate. Etta, the
acid-tongued, the ferret-faced, was not the sort to go off without the
impetus of a dowry. The man for Etta, the shrew, must be kindly,
long-suffering, subdued--and in need of a start. He was. They managed a
very decent trousseau and the miracle of five thousand dollars in cash.
Every stitch in the trousseau and every penny in the dowry represented
incredible sacrifice and self-denial on the part of mother and brother.
Etta went off to her new home in Pittsburg with her husband. She had
expressed thanks for nothing and had bickered with her mother to the
last, but even Hugo knew that her suit and hat and gloves and shoes were
right