nd Rose Ransome's gone to Virginia
City, and there's a party and wife that'll give me twenty a month for
the room. And as it happens I'm full up now, Em--"

"Well, of course we'll pay--" George was beginning, somewhat haughtily,
but Emeline, who had grown rather red, interrupted:

"It don't make the slightest difference," she said, with spirit. "I
guess I'm the last woman in the world to want my child to stay where she
isn't welcome!"

"It ain't that at all, Em," Mrs. Tarbury threw in pacifically, but
Emeline was well launched now.

"If it hadn't been that George was all but passing away with kidney
trouble," Emeline said, her voice rising, "I never would of let such an
arrangement go on for five minutes! But there was days when we never
knew from hour to hour that George wasn't dying, and what with having
him moved and that woman holding up his clothes, and telling the doctor
lies about me, I guess I had troubles enough without worrying about
Julie. But I want to tell you right now, Min," said Emeline, with kindly
superiority, "that this isn't the kind of a house I'm crazy about having
my daughter in, anyway. It ain't you, so much--"

"Ha! that's good!" Mrs. Tarbury interpolated, with a sardonic laugh.

"But you know very well that such girls as Rosie and Con--" Emeline
rushed on.

"Oh, my God, Em!" Mrs. Tarbury began in a low voice rich with feeling,
but Julia took a hand.

"Don't be such a fool, Aunt Min!" she said, going over to sit on an arm
of Mrs. Tarbury's chair, and putting a caressing arm about her
shoulders. "And cut it out, Mama! Aunt Min's been kinder to me than any
one else, and you know it--and I've felt pretty darn mean living here
day after day! And now I say if Aunt Min has a chance to rent her
room--"

"God knows you're welcome to that room as long as you'll stay, Julie,"
Mrs. Tarbury said tremulously; "it's only--"

"If every one was as good to me as you are, Aunt Min!" Julia said,
beginning to cry. Mrs. Tarbury burst into sobs, and they clung together.

"I never meant that you wasn't awfully good to her, Min," Emeline said
stiffly. Then her eyes watered, and she, too, began to cry, and groped
for her handkerchief. "I'm just worn out with worrying and taking care
of George, I guess," sobbed Emeline, laying her head on the arm she
flung across a nearby table.

"Don't cry, Mama!" Julia gulped, leaving Mrs. Tarbury's lap to come and
pat her mother's shoulder. Emeline convulsively seized h