g, that lay on the seat beside her,
timidly, like a man touching a snapping-turtle.

"You poor, lonely little missy--and, if you don't mind my saying it, so
pretty and all."

"My nose is red!" she said, dabbing at it with her handkerchief and
observing herself in the strip of mirror.

"Like I care! I've seen a good many funerals in my day--and give me a
healthy red-nose cry every time! I've had dry funerals and wet ones; and
of the two it's the wet ones that go off easiest. Gimme a wet funeral,
and I'll run it off on schedule time, and have the horses back in the
stable to the minute! It's at the dry funerals that the wimmin go off in
swoons and hold up things in every other drug store. I'm the last one to
complain of a red nose, little missy."

"Oh," she said, catching her breath on the end of a sob, "I know I'm a
sight! Poor Angie--she used to say a lot of women get credit for bein'
tender-hearted when their red noses wasn't from cryin' at all, but from
a small size and tight-lacin'. Poor Angie--to think that only day before
yesterday we were going down to work together! She always liked to walk
next to the curb, 'cause she said that's where the oldest ought to
walk."

"'In the midst of life we are in death,'" said Mr. Lux. The wind
stiffened and blew more sharply still. "Lemme raise that window, little
missy. It's gettin' real Novembery--and you in that thin jacket and all.
Hadn't we better stop off and get you a cup of coffee?"

"When I get home I'll fix it," she said. "When--I--get--home." She
lowered her faintly purple lids and shivered.

"Poor little missy!"

Toward the close of their long drive a heavy dusk came early and shut
out the dim afternoon; the lights of the city began to show whimsically
through the haze.

"We're almost--home," she said.

"Almost; and if you don't mind I ain't going to leave you all alone up
there. I'll go up with you and kinda stay a few minutes till--till the
newness wears off. I know what them returns home mean. I'd kinda like to
stay with you awhile, if you'll let me, Miss Prokes."

"Oh, Mr. Lux, you're so kind and all; but some of the girls from the
store'll be over this evening--and Mame and George."

"I'll just come up a minute, then," said Mr. Lux, "and see if the boys
got all the things out of the flat. Only last week they forgot and left
a ebony coffin-stand at a place."

The din of the city closed in about them: the streets, already lashed
dry by the wind, s