nd, with his arm around her, he led her out of the room.

Outside of her small immediate circle Anna's death was hardly felt.
The little house went on much as before. Harriet carried back to her
business a heaviness of spirit that made it difficult to bear with
the small irritations of her day. Perhaps Anna's incapacity, which had
always annoyed her, had been physical. She must have had her trouble a
longtime. She remembered other women of the Street who had crept through
inefficient days, and had at last laid down their burdens and closed
their mild eyes, to the lasting astonishment of their families. What did
they think about, these women, as they pottered about? Did they resent
the impatience that met their lagging movements, the indifference
that would not see how they were failing? Hot tears fell on Harriet's
fashion-book as it lay on her knee. Not only for Anna--for Anna's
prototypes everywhere.

On Sidney--and in less measure, of course, on K.--fell the real brunt of
the disaster. Sidney kept up well until after the funeral, but went down
the next day with a low fever.

"Overwork and grief," Dr. Ed said, and sternly forbade the hospital
again until Christmas. Morning and evening K. stopped at her door and
inquired for her, and morning and evening came Sidney's reply:--

"Much better. I'll surely be up to-morrow!"

But the days dragged on and she did not get about.

Downstairs, Christine and Palmer had entered on the round of midwinter
gayeties. Palmer's "crowd" was a lively one. There were dinners
and dances, week-end excursions to country-houses. The Street grew
accustomed to seeing automobiles stop before the little house at all
hours of the night. Johnny Rosenfeld, driving Palmer's car, took to
falling asleep at the wheel in broad daylight, and voiced his discontent
to his mother.

"You never know where you are with them guys," he said briefly. "We
start out for half an hour's run in the evening, and get home with the
milk-wagons. And the more some of them have had to drink, the more they
want to drive the machine. If I get a chance, I'm going to beat it while
the wind's my way."

But, talk as he might, in Johnny Rosenfeld's loyal heart there was no
thought of desertion. Palmer had given him a man's job, and he would
stick by it, no matter what came.

There were some things that Johnny Rosenfeld did not tell his mother.
There were evenings when the Howe car was filled, not with Christine
and her fri