een
Houses of Heth and Houses of Dabney. Cally Heth rolled up to the door of
the abandoned hotel. Large and dismal it looked in the slanting rain.
Archaic, too, so the modern of the moderns thought, glancing upward over
the face of the shabby pile as the car halted, and William, who was ever
attentive to his young mistress, sprang out with the umbrellas. It was
an odd place for anybody to live, certainly; an even odder place to draw
in storm the world of fashion foregathering to its bosom. Yet this
indubitably was the spot. There was the little procession of motor-cars,
lined against the broken sidewalk in the wet, to prove it. The girl's
upward eye fell, too, upon a name, inscribed in white paint upon a
window directly above the decayed grand entrance:

DR. VIVIAN

Carlisle became conscious of a certain excitement. She hoped very much
that they hadn't read out the names of subscribers yet.

She was late, so there was nobody to show her in. From the sidewalk she
stepped under a queer little portico, which seemed to waft one back to a
previous century. Here, at the vestibule step, she was obliged to move
carefully to avoid treading on two dirty little denizens of the
neighborhood, who knew no better than to block the way of the quality.
They were little Jew girls,--little Goldnagels, in short,--and while one
of them sat and played at jackstones with a flat-looking rubber ball,
the other and smaller lay prone upon her stomach, weeping with
passionate abandon.

Her agonized wails indicated the end of the world, and worse. Carlisle
said kindly:

"What's the matter, little girl?"

The lamenting one, who was about four years old, rolled around and
regarded the lady with a contorted face. Her wails died to a whimper:
but then, curiosity satisfied and no solace offering, she burst forth as
with an access of mysterious pain.

"Did she hurt herself?" said Carlisle, third-personally, to the elder
girl, who had suspended her game to stare wide-eyed. "What on earth is
the matter?"

The reply was tragically simple:

"_A Lady stepped on her Junebug_."

Sure enough, full on the vestibule floor lay the murdered slumbug, who
had too hardily ventured to cross a wealthy benevolent's path. The
string was yet tied to the now futile hind-leg. Carlisle, lingering,
repressed her desire to laugh.

"Oh!... Well, don't you think you could catch her a new one, perhaps?"

"Bopper he mout ketch her a new one mebbe to-morrow, mom.... _