They didn't leave me till they'd stripped me clean. I felt like a
Christmas tree the day after. But, somehow, I didn't care.



VIII.


Is that you, Mag? Well, it's about time you came home to look
after me. Fine chaperon you make, Miss Monahan! Why, didn't I
tell you the very day we took this flat what a chaperon was, and
that you'd have to be mine? Imagine Nancy Olden without a
chaperon--Shocking!

No, 'tisn't late. Sit down, Maggie, there, and let me get the
stool and talk to you. Think of us two--Cruelty girls, both of
us--two mangy kittens deserted by the old cats in a city's
alleys, and left mewing with cold and hunger and dirt, out in the
wet--think of us two in our own flat, Mag!

I say, it makes me proud of us! There are times when I look at
every stick of furniture we own, and I try to pretend to it all
that I'm used to a decent roof over my head, and a dining-room,
kitchen, parlor, bedroom and bath. Oh, and I forgot the telephone
the other tenant left here till its lease is up. But at other
times I stand here in the middle of it and cry out to it, in my
heart:

"Look at me, Nancy Olden, a householder, a rent-payer, the head