oung girl she had been used to spending her own, and
now, thanks to Mercedes she was doing it again, and, out of her profits,
assaying more expensive and delightful adventures in lingerie.

Mercedes suggested, and Saxon carried out and even bettered, the dainty
things of thread and texture. She made ruffled chemises of sheer linen,
with her own fine edgings and French embroidery on breast and shoulders;
linen hand-made combination undersuits; and nightgowns, fairy and
cobwebby, embroidered, trimmed with Irish lace. On Mercedes' instigation
she executed an ambitious and wonderful breakfast cap for which the old
woman returned her twelve dollars after deducting commission.

She was happy and busy every waking moment, nor was preparation for the
little one neglected. The only ready made garments she bought were three
fine little knit shirts. As for the rest, every bit was made by her own
hands--featherstitched pinning blankets, a crocheted jacket and cap,
knitted mittens, embroidered bonnets; slim little princess slips
of sensible length; underskirts on absurd Lilliputian yokes;
silk-embroidered white flannel petticoats; stockings and crocheted
boots, seeming to burgeon before her eyes with wriggly pink toes and
plump little calves; and last, but not least, many deliciously soft
squares of bird's-eye linen. A little later, as a crowning masterpiece,
she was guilty of a dress coat of white silk, embroidered. And into all
the tiny garments, with every stitch, she sewed love. Yet this love,
so unceasingly sewn, she knew when she came to consider and marvel, was
more of Billy than of the nebulous, ungraspable new bit of life that
eluded her fondest attempts at visioning.

"Huh," was Billy's comment, as he went over the mite's wardrobe and came
back to center on the little knit shirts, "they look more like a real
kid than the whole kit an' caboodle. Why, I can see him in them regular
manshirts."

Saxon, with a sudden rush of happy, unshed tears, held one of the
little shirts up to his lips. He kissed it solemnly, his eyes resting on
Saxon's.

"That's some for the boy," he said, "but a whole lot for you."

But Saxon's money-earning was doomed to cease ignominiously and
tragically. One day, to take advantage of a department store bargain
sale, she crossed the bay to San Francisco. Passing along Sutter Street,
her eye was attracted by a display in the small window of a small shop.
At first she could not believe it; yet there