approved, came downstairs and softly entered the Page flat, and
gathered the sobbing little girl to her warm, soft breast. Miss Miniver
soothed her with a new stick of gum and a pincushion that looked like a
fat little pink satin leg, with a smart boot at one end and a ruffle of
lace at the other, and left Julia peacefully settled down to sleep. But
Julia did not remember anything of this in the morning, and the
pincushion had rolled under the bed, so Emeline never knew of it. She
and George had a good dinner, and later went to the Orpheum, and were
happier than they had been for a long time.

The next Sunday they went to Oakland to see Emeline's sister, and
possibly to begin househunting. It was a cold, dark day, with a raw wind
blowing. Gulls dipped and screamed over the wake of the ferryboat that
carried the Pages to Oakland, and after the warm cabin and the heated
train, they all shivered miserably as they got out at the appointed
corner. Oakland looked bleak and dreary, the wind was blowing chaff and
papers against fences and steps.

Emeline had rather lost sight of her sister for a year or two, and had
last seen her in another and better house than the one which they
presently identified by street and number. The sisters had married at
about the same time, but Ed Torney was a shiftless and unfortunate man,
never steadily at work, and always mildly surprised at the discomfort of
life. May had four children, and was expecting a fifth. Two of the older
children, stupid-looking little blondes, with colds in their noses, and
dirt showing under the fair hair, were playing in the dooryard of the
shabby cottage now. The gate hung loose, the ground was worn bare by
children's feet and dug into holes where children had burrowed, and
littered with cans and ropes and boxes.

Emeline was genuinely shocked by the evidences of actual want inside.
May was a thin, bent, sickly looking woman now, her graying hair hanging
in a loose coil over her cotton wrapper. Floors everywhere were bare, a
few chairs were here and there, a few beds running over with thin
bedding, a table in the kitchen was covered with scattered dishes, some
dirty and some clean. Ashes drifted out of the kitchen stove, and in the
sink was a great tin dish-pan full of cool, greasy water. The oldest
child, a five-year-old girl, had followed these dazzling visitors in,
and now mounted a box and attacked this dish-pan with pathetic energy.
The two younger children