rd, cared
for the child with the tender efficiency of a professional nurse;
Bennie's face, as he looked at his tiny sister, had taken on a cherubic
softness. And Jim ... Rose-Marie glanced at Jim and was startled out of
her reflections. For Jim was not looking at Lily. His gaze was fixed upon
her own face with an intensity that frightened her. With a sudden impulse
she spoke directly to him.

"You must be very kind to this little sister of yours," she told him.
"She needs every bit of love and affection and consideration that her
family can give her!"

Jim, his gaze still upon her face, shrugged his shoulders. But before
he could answer Ella had come a step closer to Rose-Marie. Her eyes
were flashing.

"Jim," she said, "ain't got any love or kindness or consideration in him!
Jim thinks that Lily ain't got any more feelin's than a puppy dog--'cause
she can't answer back. Oh," in response to the question in Rose-Marie's
face, "oh, he'd never put a finger on her--not that! But he don't speak
kind to her, like we do. It's enough fer him that she can't hear th'
words he lays his tongue to. Even Pa--"

Suddenly, as if in answer to his spoken name, there came a scuffling
sound from the corner where Pa was sleeping. All at once the empty bottle
dropped from the unclenched hand, the mouth fell open in a prodigious
yawn, the eyes became wide, burned-out wells of drunkenness. And as she
watched, Rose-Marie saw the room cleared in an amazing fashion. She heard
Mrs. Volsky's terrified whisper, "He's wakin' up!" She heard Jim's harsh
laugh; she saw Ella, with a fiercely maternal sweep of her strong arms,
gather the little Lily close to her breast and dart toward the inner
room. And then, as she stood dazedly watching the mountain of sodden
flesh that was Pa rear itself to a sitting posture, and then to a
standing one, she felt a hot little hand touch her own.

"We better clear out," said the voice of Bennie. "We better clear out
pretty quick! Pa's awful bad, sometimes, when he's just wakin' up!"

With a quickness not unlike the bump at the end of a
falling-through-space dream, Rose-Marie felt herself drawn from the
room--heard the door close with a slam behind her. And then she was
hurrying after the shadowy form of Bennie, down the five rickety flights
of stairs--past the same varied odours and the same appalling sounds that
she had noticed on the way up!

VIII

ANOTHER QUARREL

When Rose-Marie came out into the