fifteen thousand when one of your contracts alone runs into the hundred
thousands? Honey?"

"Wire," he said, sourly, but not withdrawing his hand from hers.

* * * * *

They left her at the shady court-house steps in Demopolis, but with
pleasantry and gibe.

"Give my love to the town pump."

"Rush the old oaken growler for me."

"So long!" she called, eager to be rid of them. "Pick me up at six
sharp."

She walked slowly up High Street. Passers-by turned to stare, but
otherwise she was unrecognized. There was a new five-and-ten-cent store,
and Finley Brothers had added an ell. High Street was paved. She made a
foray down into the little side street where she had spent those queerly
remote first seventeen years of her life. How dim her aunt seemed! The
little unpainted frame house was gone. There was a lumber yard on the
site. Everything seemed to have shrunk. The street was narrower and
dirtier than she recalled it.

She made one stop, at the house of Maggie Simms, a high-school chum. It
was a frame house, too, and she remembered that the front door opened
directly into the parlor and the side entrance was popularly used
instead. But a strange sister-in-law opened the side door. Maggie was