to
one girl. She remembered them now--the gentle day-nurse and the gentle
night-nurse, who had moved soft-footedly about her bed, performing
soothing little offices. Uncle Em smiled at her puzzled face.

"No wonder you don't 'see,'" he said, interpreting her thoughts. "But in
this case the sick person gets but an hour's care, perhaps, a day. The
nurse goes from house to house, doing what she can in a little time.
She has to divide up her care, you see. But it is a merciful work--a
merciful work."

Gloria's face was thoughtful. Treeless Street haunted her.

"Do you know a street that hasn't a single tree on it, Uncle Em? The
awfulest street! Just children and children and children and tenement
houses. I suppose I've been by it hundreds of times, but I never saw it
till to-day. It must have a name to it."

"What do you want to know its name for, my dear? It isn't the kind of
a street to run about on!" Uncle Em laughed. To Gloria the note of
uneasiness in his voice was not noticeable.

She nodded a gay little good-by and was gone.

CHAPTER II.

After leaving her uncle's office the fancy seized Gloria to walk home
instead of taking a car. She would find Treeless Street and explore
it--perhaps meet the neat little figure of the District Nurse somewhere
in its dismal depths. She wanted to know more of this new manner of
helping people an hour a day. It was characteristic of Gloria to indulge
her fancies and to find out what she wished to know. She walked slowly
away, searching every cross street for the special one she wanted.
They were all dismal streets for a little way, but none of them
were absolutely devoid of trees. Scanty grass-spots relieved their
dreariness, and the swarms of children were comfortably enough dressed.
It was some little time before Gloria reached Treeless Street, but when
she did, she knew it at once. Without hesitation she turned into it.

Topply tenement after tenement--was there no end to them? Was there no
end to the children with little old faces? Babies trundled other babies
in rickety carts; the clamor of sharp little voices filled the street.
Gloria, in a new world, threaded her way among the children and thought
her new thoughts. They were confused, unwelcome thoughts, but she
entertained them valiantly.

"Think of coming here every day, perhaps, and living right along!"

A small boy in grotesque man-trousers, reefed and rolled, intruded
himself and his baby-charge in her wa