drudge away in a bookstore all her
life, or to go out on Sundays with her cousin. Norma dreamed for hours
of Leslie's life, the ease and warmth and beauty of it, and when Leslie
was actually heralded as engaged the younger girl felt a pang of the
first actual jealousy she had ever known. She imagined the beautiful
drawing-room in which Acton Liggett--perhaps as fascinating a person as
his brother!--would clasp pearls about Leslie's fair little throat; she
imagined the shining dinner tables at which Leslie's modestly dropped
blonde head would be stormed with compliments and congratulations.

And suddenly molasses peppermints and dish-washing became odious to
her, and she almost disliked Rose for her pitiable ecstasies over china
bowls and glass-towels. All the pleasant excitement of her call upon
Mrs. Melrose, with Aunt Kate, died away. It had seemed the beginning of
some vaguely dreamed-of progress toward a life of beauty and
achievement, but it was two weeks ago now, and its glamour was fading.

True, Christopher Liggett had come into Biretta's bookstore, with
Leslie, and he and Norma had talked together for a few minutes, and
Leslie had extended her Aunt Alice's kind invitation for tea. But no day
had been set for the tea, Norma reflected gloomily. Now, she supposed,
the stir of Leslie's engagement would put all that out of Christopher's
head.

Wolf was not particularly sympathetic with her, she mused,
disconsolately. Wolf had been acting in an unprecedented manner of late.
Rose's engagement seemed to have completely turned his head. He laughed
at Norma, hardly heard her words when she spoke to him, and never moved
his eyes from her when they were together. Norma could not look up from
her book, or her plate, or from the study of a Broadway shop window,
without encountering that same steady, unembarrassed, half-puzzled
stare.

"What's the matter with you, Wolf?" she would ask, impatiently. But Wolf
never told her.

As a matter of fact, he did not know. He was a silent, thoughtful
fellow, old for his years in many ways, and in some still a boy. Norma
and Rose had known only the more prosperous years of Kate's life, but
Wolf remembered many a vigil with his mother, remembered her lonely
struggles to make a living for him and for the girls. He himself was the
type that inevitably prospers--industrious, good, intelligent, and
painstaking, but as a young boy in the working world he had early seen
the terrors in the