hanging in one window. Across the street, on a lot that had once held a
similar dignified residence, was the yellow brick building of the "Albert
Hotel," and next door, on the east, a remodelled house of "apartments"
with speaking tubes in the doorway.

The woman led him up another flight of steps to the open door of
the house, through a hallway covered with a ragged carpet, where a
dilapidated walnut hat-rack stood, up the stairs, threading a dark
passage that led into a low-ceiled, stifling room at the very back.
A stout, slatternly person in a wrapper rose as they entered, but the
mother cast herself down beside the lounge where the child was. Hodder
had a moment of fear that she was indeed too late, so still the boy lay,
so pathetically wan was the little face and wasted the form under the
cotton nightgown. The mother passed her hand across his forehead.

"Dicky!" she whispered fearfully, "Dicky!"

He opened his eyes and smiled at her; feebly.

The, stout woman, who had been looking on with that intensity of sympathy
of which the poor are capable, began waving gently the palm-leaf fan.
She was German.

"He is so good, is Dicky. He smile at me when I fan him--once, twice.
He complains not at all."

The mother took the fan from her, hand.

"Thank you for staying with him, Mrs. Breitmann. I was gone longer than
I expected." The fact that the child still lived, that she was again in