a yard. I
can come up mornings once in a while and sew them. They didn't have
money enough to pay all down, so I lent Charlie fifteen dollars and they
have to pay ten dollars a month. They will get along fine. Alice is
going to the market herself and I told them they ought to live for five
dollars a week for the two of them, so they will save money.

Gee, it kinda made me feel all in that the flat was not mine. When you
come out, Kate, let us hire a flat and you stay home and take care of
Billy and do the cooking and I will hustle the dough. Wouldn't I just
love to put my door key at night into a little place like they are in,
and feel it was ours and go out in the kitchen and eat some Irish stew,
and then set down and have a gab fest with you over what we had done all
day? Well, maybe we will do it. Just want a thing bad and you will get
it and I want a little place of our own some day and you and Billy with
me and no fear of the police. I am waiting to hear from you.

Yours,
_Nan_.

XXVII

Oh, Kate, but your letter made me happy. I just carry it round with me
and take a peep at it every once in a while to make sure it is real. You
say when setting alone you have been thinking and you want to go
straight when you come out for Billy's sake. I understood how you feel
about me giving him away and that it was a rotten trick for me to play
you, but I didn't know what else to do then. And then you feel so glad
to have him back and know you can see him again, that it has kinda
braced you up. Now, perhaps if I had not give him away, and he hadn't
been nearly drowned, you wouldn't have had the scare about losing him,
and you wouldn't never have known how much you cared for him. Oh, Kate,
I just feel it in my bones that we are going to be happy as goats when
you get out. We will shake Jim someway, and anyway, it will be a long
time before he is out, and we will begin over again and you will keep
house for Billy and me and--I just can't talk I am so happy. Heaven's
going to have to offer a lot to coax Nancy Lane away from little old New
York when all these pipes come true.

Yours,
_Nan_.

XXVIII

_Dear Kate_:

I just don't know how I can tell you all about it. Jim is out and it is
awful. I suppose you know it by this time in that way that you people
seem to get all the news, especially any news that has to do with crooks
or prisons. The papers say that him and French Louis hit one of the
guard