ons have left Colorado and have moved to
Iowa where Jared has started another paper? Lizzie and I used to be such
chums--she and Violet and I--where is Violet now, Mr. Brotherton? Oh,
yes, I remember Mrs. Herdicker said she lives next door to the
kindergarten--down in South Harvey. Isn't it terrible the way Anne Sands
did--just broke her father's heart. And Nate Perry quarrelling with ten
million dollars. Isn't this a strange world, Mr. Brotherton?"

Mr. Brotherton confessed for the world and Mrs. Van Dorn shook her
over-curled head sadly. She made some other talk with Mr. Brotherton
which he paraphrased later for Henry Fenn and when Mrs. Van Dorn went
out, Mr. Brotherton left the door open to rid the room of the scent of
attar of roses and said to Miss Calvin:

"Well, s--," but checked himself and went on in his new character of
custodian of "The Sweet Serenity of Books and Wall Paper," but he added
as a compromise:

"'And for bonnie Annie Laurie' I certainly would make a quick get-away!"

After which reflection, Mr. Brotherton walked down the long store room
to his dark stained desk, turned on the electric under the square copper
shade, and began to figure up his accounts. But a little social problem
kept revolving in his head. It was suggested by Mrs. Van Dorn and by
something she had said. Beside Mrs. Van Dorn in her tailored gown and
seal-skin, with her spanking new midwinter hat to match her coat,
dragging the useless dog after her, he saw the picture of another woman
who had come in the day before--a woman no older than Margaret Van
Dorn--yet a broken woman, with rounded shoulders who rarely smiled,
wishing to hide her broken teeth, who wheeled one baby and led another,
and shooed a third and slipped into the corner near the magazine counter
and thumbed over the children's fashions in the _Delineator_
eagerly and looked wistfully at the beautiful things in the store. Her
red hands and brown skin showed that she had lived a rough, hard life,
and that it had spent her and wasted her and taken everything she
prized--and given her nothing--nothing but three overdressed children
and a husband whose industrial status had put its heavy mark on her.

Mr. Brotherton's memory went back ten years, and recalled the two girls
together--Violet and Margaret. Both were light-headed and vain; so far
as their relations with Van Dorn were concerned, one was as blamable as
the other. Yet one had prospered and the other had not--