Olga had come straight from a peasant cottage in her

country, and her idea of scrubbing the kitchen floor was to dash
pails of water over it and then sweep the water out of the back
door with a broom.

There was a Swedish colony established around the pickle
factories on the northern edge of the town, and Olga went over
there with her "fella" to a dance or downtown or to a picture
show almost every evening. No wonder she was not fit for work in
the morning.

When Janice had come up to bed the previous evening she had
brought with her the "treasure-box" which daddy usually kept in
the wall safe in the living room. It contained certain heirlooms
and trinkets that had been her mother's, and were now Janice's
most sacred possessions.

She had had to beg daddy for the treasure-box, for he, too,
prized its contents beyond words. But Janice was a careful girl,
and daddy trusted her, and he knew, too, that the mementoes of
her dead mother seemed to bring the woman closer to the little
daughter; and so, in the end, he had allowed Janice to carry the
treasure-box to her room to be kept for the night, but to be
returned to its usual place after the girl had had it by her and
looked at its contents for a while.

There were a few pieces of jewelry--more valuable for their
associations than for their intrinsic worth, the gold framed