er or killed, the way we was
always in the streets. It might have been all right, but I would hate to
see Billy bringing himself up the way I did.

Oh, Kate, he is the cutest thing! He has a cot in the corner of the room
facing the doorway, and I step in the door and stand there a minute
until he looks up, and then his face all changes and breaks in little
dimples and smiles, and he holds out his arms to me and says, "Nannie,
my Nannie is tum." Why you know, I all choke up and I hold him close in
my arms and talk to him and play with him until the nurse comes with
their suppers, and all the visitors must leave. I go back to the room
which is empty without him. It is funny what a change a baby brings to a
place, and how it makes home out of a bum little six-dollar-a-week room.
I didn't put his things away when he was took to the hospital, cause I
like to see them laying around. His shoes look so funny under the bed
setting by mine, and I got a lot of his clothes hanging up on a line
behind the door. I washed lots of his clothes out myself, not so much
to save the money as I like to be a doing something for him. I must say
you dressed him nice, Kate, his clothes looked so pretty when they was
all ironed and hung up in a row and his funny little white
stockings--don't he wear them out fast? When I undressed him at night,
if there was a hole in his stocking, he would wiggle his little pink toe
out of it and point to it and say, "Naughty, naughty Billy." The girls
in the place were just crazy about him, but they gave him too much candy
and fussed over him more than I liked, yet I hated to call them down, as
the poor devils don't have a chance to see a baby often.

Mary Callahan is sick. I want her to go to the hospital, but she won't
do it. The other night coming home from the theatre in a lot of slush
and snow, she caught an awful cold. She is all in. I fussed around her
all morning and put a mustard plaster on her chest, which burned the
skin all off and made her awful mad at me. She says she won't be able to
cover it with make-up for a month, and it will mean a good fat
call-down from the manager, but between you and me, she will have time
to get a brand new skin before she will be able to show up at work
again.

Well, so long, old girl. I must go to bed. Gee, how I do miss Billy.
Night-times I used to have to lift him over on his own side, cause he
would lay cross wise on the bed, and when I would get in it would be al