to transmitting draughts on suffocating nights for the benefit of
packed audiences; and everybody gasped for breath, though everybody
fanned--that is, everybody who had a fan, a newspaper, a hat, or a
starched handkerchief. Mollie had neither fan, newspaper, hat, nor
handkerchief, and yet she of all the audience gasped unawares. She was
stifled, but happy. Elbows and bad air might do their worst; her body
suffered, but her spirit soared. She was lifted above her neighbors,
into an atmosphere where she was conscious of nothing but the
eloquence that fell in such soft tones from the lips of the beautiful
woman on the stage.

Mollie was fatherless and brotherless. She had no male cousins within
a thousand miles. Her only uncle, two blocks off, was a man whose
dinners rebelled against digestion, and who might have been beyond
the seas for all the good he did her. They were a feminine
family,--Mollie, her mother, the old cat and her kittens
three,--bereft of masculine rule and care, and in need of money earned
by masculine hands.

The mother bore losses and lacks with the philosophy of her age; but
Mollie's age was only twelve, and knew not philosophy. She realized
that she was a mistake. She was miserably aware that she was a mistake
which could never be corrected. Friends repeatedly assured her that it
was a great pity she had not been born a boy, and tantalized her with
boyhood's possibilities. Frequent mention was made of ways in which
she might minister to her mother's comfort if she were a son; and all
Mollie's day-dreams were visions of that gallant son's achievements.
She used to close her eyes and see wings and bay-windows growing
around their little cottage and making it a mansion; their old clothes
gliding away, and fine new robes stepping into their places; strong