laid the table-cloth down, took from his pocket the stub of a pencil,
and wrote the words on his cuff. Then he picked up the cloth, laid it
over his arm, and opened the door. As he went out he paused and said
over his shoulder: "Master Lewis, it would hurt the governor's feelin's
if you asked him or anybody else how he got the nime of Gripes."

Let a man but feel lonely, and his mind immediately harks along the back
trail of the past. In his lonely week Lewis frequently found himself
thinking back. It was only by thinking back that he could stay in the
flat at all. Now for the first time he realized that he had been
stepping through life with seven-league boots. The future could not
possibly hold for him the tremendous distances of his past. How far he
had come since that first dim day at Consolation Cottage!

To every grown-up there is a dim day that marks the beginning of things,
the first remembered day of childhood. Lewis could not fasten on any
memory older than the memory of a rickety cab, a tall, gloomy man, and
then a white-clad group on the steps of Consolation Cottage. Black
mammy, motherly Mrs. Leighton, curly-headed Shenton, and little Natalie,
with her 'wumpled' skirt, who had stood on tiptoe to put her lips to
his, appeared before him now as part of the dawn of life.

As he looked back, he saw that the sun had risen hot on his day of life.
It had struck down Shenton, blasted the Reverend Orme, withered Ann
Leighton, and had turned plump little Natalie's body into a thin, wiry
home for hope. Natalie had always demanded joy even of little things.
Did she still demand it? Where was Natalie? Lewis asked himself the
question and felt a twinge of self-reproach. Life had been so full for
him that he had not stopped to think how empty it might be for Natalie,
his friend.