lived. Here were the chairs he sat in, the books he read, the pictures
he enjoyed. And the well-dressed, well-bred people, the hum of low
voices, the clusters of roses, the shaded candles, their soft rosy light
falling on the egg-shell cups and saucers and silver service, and the
lovely girl dispensing all this hospitality and cheer! Yes, here he
could live, breathe, enjoy life. Everything was worth while and just as
he had expected to find it.

When the throng grew thick about her table he left Ruth's side, taking
the opportunity to speak to Peter or Miss Felicia (he knew few others),
but he was back again whenever the chance offered.

"Don't send me away again," he pleaded when he came back for the
twentieth time, and with so much meaning in his voice that she looked at
him with wide-open eyes. It was not what he said--she had been brought
up on that kind of talk--it was the way he said it, and the inflection
in his voice.

"I have been literally starving for somebody like you to talk to," he
continued, drawing up a stool and settling himself determinedly beside
her.

"For me! Why, Mr. Breen, I'm not a piece of bread--" she laughed. "I'm
just girl." He had begun to interest her--this brown-eyed young fellow
who wore his heart on his sleeve, spoke her dialect and treated her as
if she were a duchess.

"You are life-giving bread to me, Miss MacFarlane," answered Jack with a
smile. "I have only been here six months; I am from the South, too." And
then the boy poured out his heart, telling her, as he had told Peter,
how lonely he got sometimes for some of his own kind; and how the young
girl in the lace hat and feathers, who had come in with Garry, was his
aunt's daughter; and how he himself was in the Street, signing checks
all day--at which she laughed, saying in reply that nothing would give
her greater pleasure than a big book with plenty of blank checks--she
had never had enough, and her dear father had never had enough, either.
But he omitted all mention of the faro bank and of the gamblers--such
things not being proper for her ears, especially such little pink shells
of ears, nestling and half hidden in her beautiful hair.

There was no knowing how long this absorbing conversation might have
continued (it had already attracted the attention of Miss Felicia) had
not a great stir taken place at the door of the outside hall. Somebody
was coming upstairs; or had come upstairs; somebody that Peter was
laughing w