ll understand this, and
agree with me when I say that such a disciplinarian as Captain Walker no
doubt was--unfortunately, I never had the pleasure of his
acquaintance--would have been the first to counsel you to obey the
rules. Won't you think it over from our point of view, Mrs. Walker, when
you go back to your room? Do! Good afternoon."

It was a very dejected Sarah Lucinda Walker that returned to her room.
Her depression was noted and audibly commented upon by Mrs. Pearson, her
next-door neighbor and arch-enemy. In fact, the whole corridor was alive
with the news of her defeat. At the lunch-table it was the sole topic
of conversation, and in the library old Colonel Rockwell--in the pauses
of a quavering rendition of "Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep"--bet Mr.
Patterson three of the cigars his nephew always sent him on Fridays that
Mrs. Walker, being a woman of spirit, would not yield even though the
ultimatum were expulsion.

Mrs. Walker heard of the wager, of course, that afternoon. They were a
hundred or more antiquated and unseaworthy vessels, all anchored in a
semi-genteel haven; and from morning till night, till sun should cease
for them to shine and water to flow they had nothing to do but to listen
to the whispering tide that told of the great ocean of life beyond, or
to gossip among themselves of their own voyages dead and done.

The incorrigible Mrs. Walker's spotless little room, with its bag of
dried crusts on the window-sill, saved for her pet, became the storm
center that afternoon. Every old lady who could possibly claim
acquaintance called to inquire her intentions; every old gentleman
leaned hard upon his cane as he lifted his hat to her in the halls with
the deference due a gallant rebel. They loved a rebel, these old
children, at the end of their lives fallen again into the domain of "you
must" and "you must not."

Sarah Lucinda Walker's world rocked beneath her. She intended, she
believed, to obey the rules, to cast off the one creature on earth to
which she could still play Lady Bountiful; to shut her hospitable window
and her loving old heart on all these fluttering, visiting strangers who
had heard of her generosity, and with every hour carried the news of it
further.

She intended all this, but when the time came she did simply as old
Colonel Rockwell had wagered she would. She opened wide her windows and
fed the hungry throng that whirred about her, scattering crumbs and
floating feathe