y of the rest, 'specially Lennie."

It certainly did me good to listen to Connie,--her brave patience was
so inspiring. As long as I was in town she came every day when her
work was finished to talk to me about Lennie. For herself she had no
ambition. Her clothes were clean, but they were odds and ends that had
served their day for other possessors; her shoes were not mates, and
one was larger than the other. She said: "I thought it was a streak
of luck when I found the cook always wore out her right shoe first
and the dining-room girl the left, because, you see, I could have
their old ones and that would save two dollars toward what I am saving
up for. But it wasn't so very lucky after all except for the fun,
because the cook wears low heels and has a much larger foot than the
dining-room girl, who wears high heels. But I chopped the long heel
off with the cleaver, and these shoes have saved me enough to buy
Lennie a pair of patent-leather slippers to wear on the Fourth of
July."

I thought that a foolish ambition, but succeeding conversations made
me ashamed of the thought.

I asked her if Lennie's father couldn't take care of her.

"Oh," she said, "Pa Ford is a good man. He has a good heart, but
there's so many of them that it is all he can do to rustle what must
be had. Why," she told me in a burst of confidence, "I've been saving
up for a tombstone for ma for twelve years, but I have to help pa once
in a while, and I sometimes think I never will get enough money saved.
It is kind of hard on three dollars a week, and then I'm kind of
extravagant at times. I have wanted a doll, a beautiful one, all my
days. Last Christmas I got it--for Lennie. And then I like to carry
out other folks' wishes sometimes. That is what I am fixing to do now.
Ma always wanted to see me dressed up real pretty just once, but we
were always too poor, and now I'm too old. But I can fix Lennie, and
this Fourth of July I am going to put all the beauty on her that ma
would have liked to see on me. They always celebrate that day at
Manila, Utah, where pa lives. I'll go out and take the things. Then
if ma is where she can see, she'll see _one_ of her girls dressed for
once."

"But aren't you mistaken when you say you have been saving for your
mother's tombstone for twelve years? She's only been dead eight."

"Why no, I'm not. You see, at first it wasn't a tombstone but a
marble-top dresser. Ma had always wanted one so badly; for she always