a business that netted twenty per cent on its
capital, with nearly a hundred operatives under her.

In trade circles Ernestine was known as the "Laundryman," a name in
which respect was mixed with chaff. Ernestine did not care. She knew
that she had "made good," and it was pleasant. She could afford now to
have a home of her own, and so she had installed herself in this
apartment, far out of the dirt and the noise in which she had lived her
life. She filled it with a strange assortment of furniture and
ornamental accessories that did not please her. Somehow after all her
years of longing, and all her efforts to make a home like other people,
she had failed lamentably, and she knew it.

"I guess it ain't in me!" she confessed to Milly.

Nevertheless, she kept the vision of it,--the vision she had had through
the swaying muslin curtains of "number 232."

Thus far Ernestine had come when she happened into Milly's life. Only
the merest outline of her strenuous, if monotonous, existence has been
given, and though Ernestine deserves much more,--deserves to be known in
her mind and her feelings, yes, and in her soul,--she must put up, as
she did in life, with getting less than her deserts, and let her rough
actions reveal her nature imperfectly.

X

MILLY'S NEW MARRIAGE

The next morning--it was Sunday--when Ernestine presented herself at the
Reddon flat to inquire in her heavy, grumbling voice for "the little
gurl," Milly had difficulty in recognizing the woman who had offered
Virginia an asylum the night before. Ernestine was now clothed in a
well-cut walking suit of dark blue broadcloth, which became her square
figure much better than the soft folds of the rose-pink negligee. Yet
Milly thought her "quite common," and had a momentary pang, realizing
how she and her daughter had come down in the world when they were
obliged to have such neighbors. But Ernestine Geyer was not "common,"
and Milly, with her quick instinct for personal values, realized it as
soon as she could recover from the shock of the harsh voice and the
ungrammatical idiom.

After the obvious remarks about the evening's episode and some
conversation with Virginia, for whom the stranger's withered hand had a
great fascination, there was a pause. It was time for Ernestine to
depart, and she knew it; but either her awkwardness kept her fixed in
her chair or she was too much fascinated by Milly to stir. This morning
Milly had put on a loose sil