attracted her grandfather and grandmother to it, forty years ago. She
tried to see her mother there, a slender, dark-haired child; tried to
imagine her aunt as young and fresh and hopeful. Had the rooms been dark
and dirty even then? Julia feared so; in none of her mother's
reminiscences was there ever any tenderness or affection for early
memories of Shotwell Street. Four young people had gone out from that
house, nearly thirty years ago, how badly equipped to meet life!

Julia's own earliest recollections centred in it. She remembered herself
as an elaborately dressed little child, shaking out her little flounces
for her grandmother's admiration, and having large hats tied over her
flushed sticky face and tumbled curls. She remembered that, instead of
the row of cheap two-story flats that now faced it, there had been a
vacant lot across the street then, where horses sometimes galloped. She
remembered the Chester of those days, a pimply, constantly smoking
youth, who gave her little pictures of actresses from his cigarette
boxes, and other little pictures that, being held to a strong light,
developed additional figures and lettering. He called her "Miss
O'Farrell of Page Street" sometimes, and liked to poke her plump little
person until she giggled herself almost into hysterics.

Still dreaming of the old times, she reached her hotel, and while Ellie
settled the baby into her waiting crib, Julia sat down before a fire,
her slippered feet to the comfortable coals, her loose mandarin robe
deliciously warm and restful after the tiring day.

"You want the lights, Mrs. Studdiford?" asked Ellie, tiptoeing in from
the next room.

"Oh, no, thank you!" Julia said. "I'll just sit here for a while, and
then go to bed."

Ellie went softly out; the clock struck nine--ten--eleven. Against the
closely curtained windows the rain still fell with a softened hiss, the
coals broke, flamed up, died down to a rosy glow. Still Julia sat, sunk
in her deep chair, musing.

She saw the Shotwell Street house changed, and made, for the first time
in its years of tenancy, into a home. There must be paint outside, clean
paint, there must be a garden, with a brick path and rose bushes, where
a little girl might take her first stumbling steps, and where spring
would make a brave showing in green and white for the eyes of tired
homegoers.

Indoors there should be a cool little orderly dining-room, with blue
china on its shelves, and a blue rug