landlady. The mother, naturally, will smile
upon the poor little thing; she will dote upon it as women do on the
ordinarily useless articles they purchase with money or pain at the
bargain counter of life. This wee white and pink mite, since its daddy's
away fighting and the mother is poor, must prove a tragedy, I am afraid.
It will be a little vampire, pretending to feed on milk but really
gorging itself on a heart's blood.

My cogitations were interrupted by the rattle of a thousand milk cans,
more or less, clattering through the street, on top of a huge, white
motor truck. I took off my coat, instinctively thinking that it was time
to go to bed, and put it on again because my door was open and it
behooved me to keep awake, since I might be required to run other
errands. The question of sleep thus disposed of, I brought out my
percolator.

For a wonder there was alcohol in the lamp, and I found the coffee in a
can I discovered in my cardboard hat-box. Two months before, my sister
Jane had told me that a silk hat was proper for the following of one's
mother to the grave, and I obeyed her. Poor darling! It was the least
and last thing I could do for her.

The lamp was alight and the steam coming, when the doctor came out,
looking rather spectral in a white gown.

"Thank goodness!" I exclaimed, dropping some pulverized bean on the
floor. "So it is all over!"

"Not yet," he informed me, smiling, "but so far everything goes well.
The big, fat Providence in gig-lamps is sitting by the patient.
Sometimes three make poor company. The solid dame came in and called her
'my dear' and rummaged things out of the trunk and fixed up the bed, and
tears began to flow. It must be a wonderful thing for a woman, who feels
abandoned of God and man, to have such a big brave creature come in to
pound the pillows and make one feel that there is yet corn in Egypt. I
left them with their heads together. The poor thing was crying a bit and
beginning to tell the story of her past life. Yes, thanks! I'll be glad
of a cup, with three lumps of sugar. Great little machine, that! And so
I thought I'd walk in here for a minute. Some things a woman tells
another must be pretty sacred, don't you think?"

I poured out the coffee appreciatively.

"The person whom you call the solid dame," I told him, "is no less a
woman than Frieda Long, the poet in pigments."

"Keeps a Beauty Shop?" he inquired.

"If you mean to ask whether she shampoos and m