hought, is frequently more of a luxury
to the donor than to the recipient.

She hurried on. The street was becoming more crowded and the heat, if
anything, more intense. She began to feel just a bit angry with
herself for exposing herself to it. Her face felt as if it were
burning up. It had not been at all necessary. She could just as well
have sent someone else. And here she was plugging along, with her
clothes all sticky, her hair coming down in wisps about her ears, and
her face as red as a beet. Funny, what had come over Joe. She was
certain it had been he but it seemed improbable. And she had been
sorry for him. He was the kind who could not "put anything across."

All her complacency was gone as she opened the tea-room door. She was
hot and tired and hurried. The little clock on the mantelshelf said a
quarter to twelve as she closed the door behind her and then she saw
that there was a customer at a far table in the corner and realized
how late she was. A short, fat little woman was sitting tensely on the
edge of a chair, looking about her with quick, restless, stabbing
glances. She had on an atrocity of a hat that looked as though someone
had plumped down on her head a flimsy crate of refuse blossoms and
vegetables. It was a riot of colour and disorder. And her short,
protuberant bosom rested on the table's edge while the face above it
was marked with stern lines of dissatisfaction. Little folds of flesh
hung down below her jaws.

Giving Mary Louise a momentary appraising glance, us the latter came
in with her bundle, she snapped out: "This place open, you suppose?"

Mary Louise hastily laid down the menus. "Yes," she said, "it is.
Haven't you been waited on?"

"No," said the old lady, stirring in her chair and making as if to
rise, though wild horses could not have pulled her away from even the
prospect of food. "I've been sitting here ten minutes by your clock."
She turned away and stared gloomily into space with her mouth sharply
set in indignant endurance of such mistreatment.

Mary Louise hurried across the room. She pushed open the swinging door
into the passage that led to the kitchen. Everything was quiet. She
wondered at it. As she stood there for an unappreciable instant, she
heard a slight sound to her right, seemingly from the little pantry or
storage room that was tucked in beneath the stairs. The door of it
ordinarily stood open.

She paused a moment then took one step forward and pushed op