things got very ugly. One night a man came to our flat and informed
me that my husband was in jail. I went to the jail the next morning and
saw him. We had quite a talk. And that afternoon I gave up our flat."

"Why?" asked Eleanore softly.

"I presumed the landlord wished it," said Mrs. Marsh without looking
around. "I took a room in a cheap hotel. Mr. Marsh came out of jail with
ideas that were all new to me. He had left his old trade union and gone
in with a new crowd of men who stood for out-and-out revolution--which I
couldn't understand. But we made the best of it. We went to the theater
that night and then he took the midnight train on one of his first
labor trips. At first these trips were only for a week or so, but as
time went on they grew longer. As a rule I never wrote him because I
never knew his address. On one trip he was away five weeks--and before
he got back there was time enough for my second baby, a little boy, to
be born and die of pneumonia."

Eleanore flinched as though that had hurt. I saw her turn and look at
Sue, who seemed even more restless than before.

"You decided to travel with him then--didn't you?" Eleanore murmured.

"Yes," said the other gruffly. "We used to try to figure out what city
he would likely be in, or at least not far away from--and then my little
girl and I would find a place to board there. It has been like that for
the past four years. In that time we've lived in fourteen places all the
way between here and the Coast."

"Have you lived all the time at hotels?" Eleanore inquired.

"We have," said the woman curtly, "but hardly the kind you're accustomed
to. As a rule, as soon as we reach a town my husband's name appears in
the papers, and on that account the more refined houses wouldn't care to
keep us long."

Eleanore leaned forward, her eyes troubled and intent. She seemed to
have forgotten Sue.

"How do you know they wouldn't?" she asked.

"I found out by trying--twice."

I heard a sudden angry creak in the battered old chair in which Sue was
sitting.

"So my little girl Lucy and I," the embittered voice went on, "go to
hotels that don't ask many questions. We pass the time going to parks or
museums--or now and then to a concert--where I try to give her a taste
for good music."

"Do you find time to keep up your music?" I asked.

"There's time enough," came the quick reply. "You see as a rule I'm just
waiting around. One night in Pittsburgh it was my bir