wrapped baby would have been equally safe. But to Mrs. Rashnowsky's
fear and pride, to see these infants was to covet them.

And so, tearfully, fearfully, she promised to think again of Isidore's
proposal. She thought all night, and all through the hurried, steaming,
driven day at the factory. When at last she was free she toiled home to
tell him that she could not do without him, and found that he had gone.

All these things had happened, as Rosie told her new friend, three
months before. The mother had been forced into smaller, darker, cheaper
quarters, and it was this transition which had so far saved Rosie from
the Truant Officer. They had moved from one school district to another,
and the authorities of their new habitat had not yet tracked the
light-falling "fer-ladies-shoes."

"But that Truant Officer will get you sure," warned Yetta. "He comes in
my house and he gets me, und makes me I shall go on the school."

"He can go on mine house all he likes," responded the lawless Rosie,
making careful inventory of her hair ribbons the while, "all he likes he
can go. There ain't never nobody there. My mamma she is all times on
factories, und me und the baby is all times by the street. I don't needs
I shall go on no school. I ain't got time."

"He'll get you on a rainy day," maintained Cassandra.

But the dread official never did discover Rosie. She was sufficiently
wise to avoid any public display of her red and yellow charms until
after school hours, unless she were well out of her own district. She
would follow street organs and behave like any other member of a
decorous audience until she was well out of the path of the ravening
Truant Officer. Then she would abandon the baby to the cold stones, and
herself to the enchantment of the music. Thus she achieved that freedom
of which her adopted country boasts, and for which Yetta
Aaronsohn--though basking in the rays of a free education, with lunches,
medical attendance, and spectacles thrown in--still yearned.

There had been a time when life had been to Yetta, even as it now was to
Rosie, a simple matter of loving and helping her mother, taking care of
the babies, and dancing to the organs in the street. Then entered the
Truant Officer, and life became a complicated affair of manners, dress,
books, washing, and friendships, with every day new laws to be met, new
ideas to be assimilated, old pleasures and employments to be thrown
aside.

That the end of his three