ped without with toys, two women met--as strangers are always
meeting, with involuntary touch and glance--borne together in a
crowd--atoms impinging for an instant, never to approach again, perhaps,
in all the coming combinations of time.

These two women, though, had met before.

One, sharp, eager--with a stylish-shabby air of dress about her, and the
look of pretense that shopmen know, as she handled and asked prices,
where she had no actual thought of buying--holding by the hand a child
of six, who dragged and teased, and got an occasional word that crushed
him into momentary silence, but who, tired with the sights and the
Christmas shopping, had nothing for it but to begin to drag and tease
again; another, with bright, happy, earnest eyes and flushing cheeks,
and hair rolled back in a golden wealth beneath her plain straw bonnet;
bonnet, and dress, and all, of simple black; these two came face to
face.

The shabby woman with a sharp look recognized nothing. Glory McWhirk
knew Mrs. Grubbling, and the child of six that had been the Grubbling
baby.

All at once, she had him in her arms; and as if not a moment had gone by
since she held him so in the little, dark, upper entry in Budd Street,
where he had toddled to her in his nightgown, for her grieved farewell,
was hugging and kissing him, with the old, forgetting and forgiving
love.

Mrs. Grubbling looked on in petrified amaze. Glory had transferred a
fragrant white paper parcel from her pocket to the child's hands, and
had thrust upon that a gay tin horse from the counter, before it
occurred to her that the mother might, possibly, neither remember nor
approve.

"I beg your pardon, ma'am, for the liberty; and it's very likely you
don't know me. I'm Glory McWhirk, that used to live with you, and mind
the baby."

"I'm sure I'm glad to see you, Glory," said Mrs. Grubbling
patronizingly; "and I hope you've been doing well since you went away
from me." As if she had been doing so especially well before, that there
might easily be a doubt as to whether going farther had not been faring
worse. I have no question that Mrs. Grubbling fancied, at the moment,
that the foundation of all the simple content and quiet prosperity that
evidenced themselves at present in the person of her former handmaid,
had been laid in Budd Street.

"And where are you living now?" proceeded she, as Glory resigned the boy
to his mint stick, and was saying good-by.

"Out in Kinnicutt, ma'