d put a hand on her arm and drew her inside.

"Angie! Angie! Here's a poor little kid...."

Tessie clutched frantically at the last crumbs of her pride. She tried
to straighten, to smile with her old bravado. What was that story she
had planned to tell?

"Who is it, dad? Who...?" Angie Hatton came into the hallway. She stared
at Angie. Then: "Why, my dear!" she said. "My dear! Come in here."

Angie Hatton! Tessie began to cry weakly, her face buried in Angie
Hatton's expensive blouse. Tessie remembered later that she had felt no
surprise at the act.

"There, there!" Angie Hatton was saying. "Just poke up the fire, dad.
And get something from the dining room. Oh, I don't know. To drink, you
know. Something...."

Then Old Man Hatton stood over her, holding a small glass to her lips.
Tessie drank it obediently, made a wry little face, coughed, wiped her
eyes, and sat up. She looked from one to the other, like a trapped
little animal. She put a hand to her tousled head.

"That's all right," Angie Hatton assured her. "You can fix it after a
while."

There they were, the three of them: Old Man Hatton with his back to the
fire, looking benignly down upon her; Angie seated, with some knitting
in her hands, as if entertaining bedraggled, tearstained young ladies at
dusk were an everyday occurrence; Tessie, twisting her handkerchief in a
torment of embarrassment. But they asked no questions, these two. They
evinced no curiosity about this dishevelled creature who had flung
herself in upon their decent solitude.

Tessie stared at the fire. She looked up at Old Man Hatton's face and
opened her lips. She looked down and shut them again. Then she flashed a
quick look at Angie, to see if she could detect there some suspicion,
some disdain. None. Angie Hatton looked--well, Tessie put it to herself,
thus: "She looks like she'd cried till she couldn't cry no more--only
inside."

And then, surprisingly, Tessie began to talk. "I wouldn't never have
gone with this fella, only Chuck, he was gone. All the boys're gone.
It's fierce. You get scared, sittin' home, waitin', and they're in
France and everywheres, learnin' French and everything, and meetin'
grand people and havin' a fuss made over 'em. So I got mad and said I
didn't care, I wasn't goin' to squat home all my life, waitin'...."

Angie Hatton had stopped knitting now. Old Man Hatton was looking down
at her very kindly. And so Tessie went on. The pent-up emotions and
thou