d that Pete was superior to admiration for lambrequins.

A few evenings later Pete entered with fascinating innovations in his
apparel. As she had seen him twice and he had different suits on each
time, Maggie had a dim impression that his wardrobe was prodigiously
extensive.

"Say, Mag," he said, "put on yer bes' duds Friday night an' I'll take
yehs teh deh show. See?"

He spent a few moments in flourishing his clothes and then vanished,
without having glanced at the lambrequin.

Over the eternal collars and cuffs in the factory Maggie spent the most
of three days in making imaginary sketches of Pete and his daily
environment. She imagined some half dozen women in love with him and
thought he must lean dangerously toward an indefinite one, whom she
pictured with great charms of person, but with an altogether
contemptible disposition.

She thought he must live in a blare of pleasure. He had friends, and
people who were afraid of him.

She saw the golden glitter of the place where Pete was to take her. An
entertainment of many hues and many melodies where she was afraid she
might appear small and mouse-colored.

Her mother drank whiskey all Friday morning. With lurid face and
tossing hair she cursed and destroyed furniture all Friday afternoon.
When Maggie came home at half-past six her mother lay asleep amidst the
wreck of chairs and a table. Fragments of various household utensils
were scattered about the floor. She had vented some phase of drunken
fury upon the lambrequin. It lay in a bedraggled heap in the corner.

"Hah," she snorted, sitting up suddenly, "where deh hell yeh been? Why
deh hell don' yeh come home earlier? Been loafin' 'round deh streets.
Yer gettin' teh be a reg'lar devil."

When Pete arrived Maggie, in a worn black dress, was waiting for him in
the midst of a floor strewn with wreckage. The curtain at the window
had been pulled by a heavy hand and hung by one tack, dangling to and
fro in the draft through the cracks at the sash. The knots of blue
ribbons appeared like violated flowers. The fire in the stove had gone
out. The displaced lids and open doors showed heaps of sullen grey
ashes. The remnants of a meal, ghastly, like dead flesh, lay in a
corner. Maggie's red mother, stretched on the floor, blasphemed and
gave her daughter a bad name.

Chapter VII

An orchestra of yellow silk women and bald-headed men on an elevated
stage near the centre of a great green-hue