girl with me--I have to
have my little girl with me!"

He was so deeply moved that his eyes were embarrassingly moist.

"Why, Carrie, every time you open your mouth you only prove to me
further what a grand little woman you are!"

"You'll like Alma, when you get to know her, Louis."

"Why, I do now! Always have said she's a sweet little thing."

"She is quiet and hard to get acquainted with at first, but that is
reserve. She's not forward like most young girls nowadays. She's the
kind of a child that would rather go upstairs evenings with a book or
her sewing than sit down here in the lobby. That's where she is now."

"Give me that kind every time in preference to all these gay young
chickens that know more they oughtn't to know about life before they
start than my little mother did when she finished."

"But do you think that girl will go to bed before I come up? Not a bit
of it. She's been my comforter and my salvation in my troubles. More
like the mother, I sometimes tell her, and me the child. If you want me,
Louis, it's got to be with her, too. I couldn't give up my baby--not my
baby."

"Why, Carrie, have your baby to your heart's content! She's got to be a
fine girl to have you for a mother, and now it will be my duty to please
her as a father. Carrie, will you have me?"

"Oh, Louis--Loo!"

"Carrie, my dear!"

And so it was that Carrie Samstag and Louis Latz came into their
betrothal.

* * * * *

None the less, it was with some misgivings and red lights burning high
on her cheek bones that Mrs. Samstag at just after ten that evening
turned the knob of the door that entered into her little sitting room.

The usual horrific hotel room of tight green-plush upholstery,
ornamental portieres on brass rings that grated, and the equidistant
French engravings of lavish scrollwork and scroll frames.

But in this case a room redeemed by an upright piano with a
green-silk-and-gold-lace-shaded floor lamp glowing by. Two gilt-framed
photographs and a cluster of ivory knickknacks on the white mantel.
A heap of handmade cushions. Art editions of the gift poets and some
circulating-library novels. A fireside chair, privately owned and drawn
up, ironically enough, beside the gilded radiator, its headrest worn
from kindly service to Mrs. Samstag's neuralgic brow.

From the nest of cushions in the circle of lamp glow Alma sprang up at
her mother's entrance. Sure enough, she had been