actually have to give Kathleen up to--By the way, Dick tells me he is
sailing for Europe to-morrow. I wonder what it means."

"Mr. Force? Is she going with him?"

"Yes. For three months."

She reflected. "I'll tell you what it means, Tom," she said, leaning
forward to lay her hand upon his knee. "He has told her everything."

"I don't believe it!"

"You mark my words, Tom. He has told her. They are going abroad to
thrash it all out, that's the long and short of it."

"I wonder," said Mr. Bingle, wide-eyed and sober. Long afterward he
came out of his reverie, and said: "I forgot to tell you that Swanson
spoke to me yesterday about his sister's latest. I was awfully sorry
for the poor chap, my dear. He seemed most anxious to see the child
comfortably settled. His sister is a scrub-woman in the Metropolitan
Life Building. It appears that she has been supplying families with
children for the past ten or twelve years. Her husband is a most
unfeeling brute. He says that the babies interfere with her work, and
so she has to either give them up altogether or let the charity
institutions take care of 'em for her. She goes on faithfully having
'em every year, and he goes on objecting to them. Swanson says she has
managed to keep two of the older ones, but the last five or six she
has been obliged to dispose of. Now, this new one is a bright little
thing, he says--quite the flower of the flock. The woman's husband, it
seems, has been out of work for seven years, and curses dreadfully