tersville?"

"Why--Ivy----" began Pa Keller, blunderingly.

But Ivy clutched his arm with a warning hand. The vaguely troubled look
in her eyes had become wildly so.

"Schlachweiler!" shouted the voice of the boss. "Customers!" and he
waved a hand in the direction of the fitting benches.

"All right, sir," answered Rudie. "Just a minute."

"Dad had to come on business," said Ivy, hurriedly. "And he brought me
with him. I'm--I'm on my way to school in Cleveland, you know. Awfully
glad to have seen you again. We must go. That lady wants her shoes, I'm
sure, and your employer is glaring at us. Come, dad."

At the door she turned just in time to see Rudie removing the shoe from
the pudgy foot of the fat lady customer.

We'll take a jump of six months. That brings us into the lap of April.

Pa Keller looked up from his evening paper. Ivy, home for the Easter
vacation, was at the piano. Ma Keller was sewing.

Pa Keller cleared his throat. "I see by the paper," he announced, "that
Schlachweiler's been sold to Des Moines. Too bad we lost him. He was a
great little pitcher, but he played in bad luck. Whenever he was on the
slab the boys seemed to give him poor support."

"Fudge!" exclaimed Ivy, continuing to play, but turning a spirited face
toward her father. "What piffle! Whenever a player pitches rotten ball
you'll always hear him howling about the support he didn't get.
Schlachweiler was a bum pitcher. Anybody could hit him with a willow
wand, on a windy day, with the sun in his eyes."

V

THE KITCHEN SIDE OF THE DOOR

The City was celebrating New Year's Eve. Spelled thus, with a capital C,
know it can mean but New York. In the Pink Fountain room of the Newest
Hotel all those grand old forms and customs handed down to us for the
occasion were being rigidly observed in all their original quaintness.
The Van Dyked man who looked like a Russian Grand Duke (he really was a
chiropodist) had drunk champagne out of the pink satin slipper of the
lady who behaved like an actress (she was forelady at Schmaus' Wholesale
Millinery, eighth floor). The two respectable married ladies there in
the corner had been kissed by each other's husbands. The slim,
Puritan-faced woman in white, with her black hair so demurely parted and
coiled in a sleek knot, had risen suddenly from her place and walked
indolently to the edge of the plashing pink fountain in the center of the
room, had stood contemplatin