But it was just 6:30 A.M. when Emma McChesney turned the little bend
in the stairway that led to the office. The scrub-woman was still in
possession. The cigar-counter girl had not yet made her appearance.
There was about the place a general air of the night before. All but
the night clerk. He was as spruce and trim, and alert and smooth-
shaven as only a night clerk can be after a night's vigil.

"'Morning!" Emma McChesney called to him. She wore blue serge, and a
smart fall hat. The late autumn morning was not crisper and sunnier
than she.

"Good-morning, Mrs. McChesney," returned Mr. Sims, sonorously. "Have a
good night's sleep? I hope the kitchen noises didn't wake you."

Emma McChesney paused with her hand on the door. "Kitchen? Oh, no. I
could sleep through a vaudeville china-juggling act. But---what an
extraordinarily unpleasant-looking man that housekeeper's husband must
have been."

That November morning boasted all those qualities which November-
morning writers are so prone to bestow upon the month. But the words
wine, and sparkle, and sting, and glow, and snap do not seem to cover
it. Emma McChesney stood on the bottom step, looking up and down Main
Street and breathing in great draughts of that unadjectivable air. Her
complexion stood the test of the merciless, astringent morning and
came up triumphantly and healthily firm and pink and smooth. The town
was still asleep. She started to walk briskly down the bare and ugly
Main Street of the little town. In her big, generous heart, and her
keen, alert mind, there were many sensations and myriad thoughts, but
varied and diverse as they were they all led back to the boy up there