ve with them by day. So she went out at night--went out into
the streets--not of South Harvey--but over into the streets of Foley,
down to Magnus and Plain Valley--out into the dark places. There Violet
by night took up the oldest trade in the world, and came home by day a
mad, half crazed mothering animal who covers her young in dread and
fear.

When Laura knew the truth--knew it surely in spite of Violet's studied
deceptions, and her outright falsehoods, the silver in the woman's laugh
was muffled for a long time. She tried to help the mad mother; but the
mother would not admit the truth, would not confess that she needed
help. Violet maintained the fiction that she was working in the night
shift at the glass factory in Magnus, and by day she starched and ironed
and pressed and washed for the overdressed children and as she said,
"tried to keep them somebody." Moreover, she would not let them play
with the dirty children of the neighborhood, but such is the fear of
social taint among women, that soon the other mothers called their
children home when the Hogan children appeared.

When Violet discovered that her trade was branding her children--she
moved to Magnus and became part of the drab tide of life that flows by
us daily with its heartbreak unheeded, its sorrows unknown, its anguish
pent up and uncomforted.

Now much meditation on the fate of Violet Hogan and upon the luck of
Margaret Van Dorn had made George Brotherton question the moral
government of the universe and, being disturbed in his mind, he
naturally was moved to language. So one raw spring day when no one was
in the Amen Corner but Mr. Fenn, in a moment of inadvertent sobriety,
Mr. Brotherton opened up his heart and spoke thus:

"Say, Henry--what's a yogi?" Mr. Fenn refused to commit himself. Mr.
Brotherton continued: "The Ex was in here the other day and she says
that she thinks she's going to become a yogi. I asked her to spell it,
and I told her I'd be for her against all comers. Then she explained
that a yogi was some kind of an adept who could transcend space and
time, and--well say, I said 'sure,' and she went on to ask me if I was
certain we were not thinking matter instead of realizing it, and I says:

"'I bite; what's the sell?'

"And the Ex says--'Now, seriously, Mr. Brotherton, something tells me
that you have in your mind, if you would only search it out, vague
intimations, left-over impressions of the day you were an ox afield.'

"