t to suffer as the children of the tenements must,
with not even a whole bed to oneself sometimes, oh, the pity of it! And
to have to lie as some of them do, all through the stifling days,
panting and gasping in the fumes of an ill-smelling lamp, because the
four dark walls have not a single window--oh, the shame of it!

Mary never encountered the first sight without wishing impulsively that
her eyes had never been opened to such things. She was so much happier
before she knew that such conditions existed in the world. But she never
came across the second that a sort of fierce joy did not take possession
of her at the thought that she _did_ know, and that she was helping in
a fight to wipe out such dreadful holes, which are all that some
families have to call home.

She fell asleep presently, and lay motionless until a banana man went by
in the street below, with loud cries of his wares underneath her window.
Then she roused up with a start, to find herself cramped from long lying
in one position with her clothes on.

"I might as well make myself comfortable and spend the whole afternoon
resting," she concluded; so slipping off her dress, she opened the
closet door to take down a long white kimono which hung on one of the
back hooks. In reaching around to get it she upset a pile of boxes on
the corner shelf, and one of them tumbled open at her feet. It was full
of odds and ends which she did not use often, and as she replaced them
her attention was called to the box itself. It was the big one that
Lieutenant Boglin had brought to the train filled with candy, the
morning that they left San Antonio.

How far away that time seemed, and how far Bogey had dropped out of her
life: Bogey and Gay and Roberta and all those other good friends who had
filled such a big place in her thoughts. She hadn't heard from any of
them for months, and lately she had scarcely thought of them. For that
matter Jack and Norman and Joyce and Phil had dropped far into the
background. They were no longer her first thought on waking, and the
most constant thought throughout the day. It was a different world she
was living in now. She wondered what old Captain Doane would think of
it; and Pink Upham-- Then she smiled, remembering that it had been weeks
since she had given a thought to either of them. And yet, only three
months before they had been a part of her daily living and thinking at
Lone-Rock.

All at once a longing for the clean, quiet l