on him!

"We'll be obliged forever if you'll do it," said the other girl,
evidently the head librarian. "Can you do it now? The children are
waiting."

"Certainly," said Phyllis, and followed the younger girl straightway to
the basement, where, it seemed, the story-hour was held. She wondered,
as they went, if the girl envied her her expensively perishable summer
organdie, with its flying sashes and costly accessories; if the girl
thought about her swinging jewelries and endless leisure with a wish to
have them for herself. She had wanted such things, she knew, when she
was being happy on fifty dollars a month. And perhaps some of the women
she had watched then had had heartaches under their furs....

The children, already sitting in a decorous ring on their low chairs,
seemed after the first surprise to approve of Phyllis. The librarian
lingered for a little by way of keeping order if it should be necessary,
watched the competent sweep with which Phyllis gathered the children
around her, heard the opening of the story, and left with an air of
astonished approval. Phyllis, late best story-teller of the Greenway
Branch, watched her go with a bit of professional triumph in her heart.

She told the children stories till the time was up, and then "just one
story more." She had not forgotten how, she found. But she never told
them the story of "How the Elephant Got His Trunk," that foolish,
fascinating story-hour classic that she had told Allan the night his
mother had died; the story that had sent him to sleep quietly for the
first time in years.... Oh, dear, was everything in the world connected
with Allan in some way or other?

It was nearly six when she went up, engulfed in children, to the
circulating room. There the night-librarian caught her. She had
evidently been told to try to get Phyllis for more story-hours, for she
did her best to make her promise. They talked shop together for perhaps
an hour and a half. Then the growing twilight reminded Phyllis that it
was time to go back. She had been shirking going home, she realized now,
all the afternoon. She said good-by to the night-librarian, and went on
down the village street, lagging unconsciously. It must have been about
eight by this time.

It was a mile back to the house. She could have taken the trolley part
of the way, but she felt restless and like walking. She had forgotten
that walking at night through well-known, well-lighted city streets, and
going