nd the
elm in the front yard died and had to be cut down. And yet it don't
seem the same place that it used to be."

"How's ma?" asked Miss Carrington.

"She was settin' by the front door, crocheting a lamp-mat when I
saw her last," said "Bill." "She's older'n she was, Miss Posie. But
everything in the house looked jest the same. Your ma asked me to set
down. 'Don't touch that willow rocker, William,' says she. 'It ain't
been moved since Posie left; and that's the apron she was hemmin',
layin' over the arm of it, jist as she flung it. I'm in hopes,' she
goes on, 'that Posie'll finish runnin' out that hem some day.'"

Miss Carrington beckoned peremptorily to a waiter.

"A pint of extra dry," she ordered, briefly; "and give the check to
Goldstein."

"The sun was shinin' in the door," went on the chronicler from
Cranberry, "and your ma was settin' right in it. I asked her if she
hadn't better move back a little. 'William,' says she, 'when I get
sot down and lookin' down the road, I can't bear to move. Never a
day,' says she, 'but what I set here every minute that I can spare
and watch over them palin's for Posie. She went away down that road
in the night, for we seen her little shoe tracks in the dust, and
somethin' tells me she'll come back that way ag'in when she's weary
of the world and begins to think about her old mother.'

"When I was comin' away," concluded "Bill," "I pulled this off'n the
bush by the front steps. I thought maybe I might see you in the city,
and I knowed you'd like somethin' from the old home."

He took from his coat pocket a rose--a drooping, yellow, velvet,
odorous rose, that hung its head in the foul atmosphere of that
tainted rathskeller like a virgin bowing before the hot breath of the
lions in a Roman arena.

Miss Carrington's penetrating but musical laugh rose above the
orchestra's rendering of "Bluebells."

"Oh, say!" she cried, with glee, "ain't those poky places the limit?
I just know that two hours at Cranberry Corners would give me the
horrors now. Well, I'm awful glad to have seen you, Mr. Summers.
Guess I'll bustle around to the hotel now and get my beauty sleep."

She thrust the yellow rose into the bosom of her wonderful, dainty,
silken garments, stood up and nodded imperiously at Herr Goldstein.

Her three companions and "Bill Summers" attended her to her cab. When
her flounces and streamers were all safely tucked inside she dazzled
them with au revoirs from her shinin