s week."

"But you said there was a summer one."

"Well, I'll tell you about that," Willy said, feeling for words. "I'm
going to be busy helping Mr. Hendricks in his campaign. Then next
fall--well, I'll either go back or Hendricks will make me chief of
police, or something." He smiled around the table. "I ought to get some
sort of graft out of it."

"Mother!" Edith protested. "He mustn't sacrifice himself for us. What
are we to him anyhow? A lot of stones hung around his neck. That's all."

It was after Willy had declared that this was his home now, and he had
a right to help keep it going, and after Ellen had observed that she had
some money laid by and would not take any wages during the strike, that
the meeting threatened to become emotional. Mrs. Boyd shed a few tears,
and as she never by any chance carried a handkerchief, let them flow
over her fichu. And Dan shook Willy's hand and Ellen's, and said that
if he'd had his way he'd be working, and not sitting round like a stiff
letting other people work for him. But Edith got up and went out into
the little back garden, and did not come back until the meeting was both
actually and morally broken up. When she heard Dan go out, and Ellen
and Mrs. Boyd go upstairs, chatting in a new amiability brought about by
trouble and sacrifice, she put on her hat and left the house.

Ellen, rousing on her cot in Edith's upper room, heard her come in some
time later, and undress and get into bed. Her old suspicion of the girl
revived, and she sat upright.

"Where I come from girls don't stay out alone until all hours," she
said.

"Oh, let me alone."

Ellen fell asleep, and in her sleep she dreamed that Mrs. Boyd had taken
sick and was moaning. The moaning was terrible; it filled the little
house. Ellen wakened suddenly. It was not moaning; it was strange, heavy
breathing, strangling; and it came from Edith's bed.

"Are you sick?" she called, and getting up, her knees hardly holding
her, she lighted the gas at its unshaded bracket on the wall and ran to
the other bed.

Edith was lying there, her mouth open, her lips bleached and twisted.
Her stertorous breathing filled the room, and over all was the odor of
carbolic acid.

"Edith, for God's sake!"

The girl was only partially conscious. Ellen ran down the stairs and
into Willy's room.

"Get up," she cried, shaking him. "That girl's killed herself."

"Lily!"

"No, Edith. Carbolic acid."

Even then he remembered he