flaming wheels revolved
against the lids. Tears ran backward toward her ears like
spectacle-frames and soaked into the pillow, a mouse with a thousand
feet scurried between the walls.

"Essie? Jimmie, that you?"

Tick-tock-tick-tock-tick-tock!

More tears leaked out from her closed eyes and found their way to her
mouth, so that she could taste their salt. Then for a slight moment she
dozed, with her body at full stretch and hardly raising the coverlet,
and her thin cheek cupped in the palm of her thin hand. The mouse
scurried in a light rain of falling plaster, and she woke with her pulse
pounding in her ears.

"Jimmie? Jimmie? Who's there?"

Tick-tock-tick-tock-tick-tock-tick-tock!

Sobs trembled through her and set the bed-springs vibrating, and she
buried her head under her flat pillow and fell to counting the
immemorial procession of phantom sheep that graze the black grasses of
the Land of Wakeful Hours and lead their sleepless shepherds through the
long, long, long pastures of the night.

"Three hundred 'n' five; three hundred 'n' six; three hundred 'n'
seven; three hundred 'n'--Jimmie?"

A key scratched at the outer lock, and she sprang two-thirds from the
bed, dragging the coverlet from its moorings.

"Jimmie, that you?"

"Sure, ma! 'Smatter?"

She relaxed as though her muscles had suddenly snapped, her tense toes
and fingers uncurled, and the blood flowed back.

"I--Nothin', Jimmie; I was just wondering if that was you."

"No, ma; it ain't me--it's my valet coming home from a dance at his
Pressing Club. You ain't sick, are you, ma?"

"No. What time is it, Jimmie? It's so dark."

"You been havin' one of your spells again, ma?"

"No, no, Jimmie."

"Didn't you promise to keep a light going?"

"I'm all right."

"Ouch! Geewhillikins, ma, if you'd burn half a dime's worth of gas till
me and Essie get home from work nights we'd save it in wear and tear on
our shins. I ain't got no more hips left than a snake."

"It's a waste, Jimmie boy; gas comes so high."

"You should worry, ma! Watch me light 'er up!"

"Be careful in there, Jimmie! Stand on a chair. I got a little supper
spread out on the table for Essie and her friend. You take a sandwich
yourself--"

"Forty cents in tips to-day, ma."

"Forty cents!"

"Yeh; and a dame in Seventieth Street gimme a quarter and hugged the
daylights out of me till my brass buttons made holes in me and cried
brineys all over the telegram, and made me