lesser cities--it was
a curious history. He had seen his wife at long intervals, sometimes
with a little money, once or twice really prosperous and hopeful,
once--a dreadful memory--discouraged and idle and drinking. This was
the last time but one, more than a year ago. Then had come the visit
when she had met him, and he had given Teddy the sand toy. Martie had
clung to her husband then; he had not looked well; he would never make
anything of this wretched profession, she had pleaded. She was doing
well at the boarding-house; he could stay there while he looked about
him for regular work.

But Wallace was "working up" a new part, and it was going to be a great
hit, he said. Every one was crazy about it. He would not go to the
boardinghouse; he said that his wife's work there was the "limit." For
his three days in town he lived with a fellow-actor at a downtown
hotel, and Martie had a curious sense that he did not belong to her at
all. There was about him the heavy aspect and manner of a man who has
been drinking, but he told her that he was "all to the wagon." His
associate, a heavy, square-jawed man with a dramatic manner, praised
Wallace's professional and personal character highly. Martie, deeply
distressed, saw him go away to try the new play and went back to her
own life.

This was in a bitter January. Now Teddy, building houses on the floor,
had passed his third enchanting birthday, and winter was upon the big
city again. Martie awaited it philosophically. Her coal was in, anyway,
or would be in, in another hour, and if the coal-drivers' strike came
to pass she might sleep in the comfortable consciousness that no one
under her roof would suffer. Her clean curtains would go up this week;
it had been an endless job; it was finished.

"And the next thing on the programme is Thanksgiving!" she said between
two yawns.

"Most of them goes out for that," said Mrs. Curley. "But the Colonel
and her will stay. Nice to be them that never had to ask the price of
turkey-meat this ten years!"

"Oh, well--we don't have it but twice a year!" Martie was folding the
new curtains; presently she gave the neat pile a brisk, condensing slap
with the flat of her hand. "There now, look what your smart Nana and
Mother did, Ted!" she boasted. "And come here and give hims mother
seventeen kisses and hugs, you darling, adorable, fat, soft, little old
monkey!" The last words were smothered in the fine, silky strands under
Teddy's dar