W

HEN the carriage stopped, Mrs. Lawrence alighted with more speed than dignity. She ran up the stoop in the same impulsive fashion and rang the bell. It had occurred to her to take the dogs for a run, and Mrs. Lawrence's thoughts and actions were wont to be as nearly simultaneous as possible.

The butler opened the door. He was Mrs. Lawrence senior's butler. The house was Mrs. Lawrence senior's house. Both were characteristic of that ladyslow, heavy, oppressive.

the roses in the big cut-glass bowl. Has Mr. Lawrence telephoned?"

"No, ma'am."

"Well, if he gets home before I do, keep him out of my sitting-room and tell him I am coming back directly. I'm going to the park with the dogs."

"Yes, ma'am;" the maid nodded sympathetically.

The carriage rolled down Madison Avenue, with a round black face emerging from either window, and yelps of salutation and inquiry sounding above the rumble of the wheels. Mrs. Lawrence leaned back with a sigh of satisfaction.

"It's ridiculous to be so pleased about it," she said aloud to Toto's back.

He glanced over his shoulder at her, wagged his stumpy tail, and devoted his attention to a messenger-boy who in exciting proximity was enjoying a ride on the back of a cab.

Mrs. Lawrence laughed.

"Very good, ma'am."

"Come here, you two," she cried, pull"Won't we have fun! You shall each have a chicken wing, and they're very bad for you."

"Very good, ma'am," said Smith again.

"Your master will be home soon," she cried gayly to the dogs, as they ran down the steps in high glee.

Smith closed the door on them, to open it a second later for Mrs. Lawrence's maid.

"What is it, Lena?" asked her mistress, as the girl's face appeared at the carriage window.

"I heard your voice in the hall, and I ran to get this,”-handing her a note,"and then I was afraid you had gone. I'm setting the table myself, Mrs. Lawrence, and it looks beautiful."

Mrs. Lawrence laughed happily. "Be sure you keep it a surprise, Lena. Put out my old white chiffon, and have

them go.

"Now we'll be staid and nice again." She straightened her hat and adjusted her veil, stopped to pick up her cardcase, and found the unopened note lying at her feet.

"From Tom," she exclaimed. "I hadn't noticed."

She tore open the envelope and read the contents quickly, then more slowly— and then sat very quiet. The dogs, finding there were to be no more confidences, leaned again from either window.

The carriage stopped at Twenty-fifth Street, and Mrs. Lawrence got out slowly, followed by Toto and Pitti Sing, who seemed to have become staid and settleddown dogs, far removed from the excited little beasts that had bundled into the brougham a few blocks farther up-town.

On the fourth turn around the park, the little dogs' tongues hung from the sides of their mouths, and their eyes turned up appealingly at their mistress. Not once had she stopped or even slackened speed; and the Japanese spaniels, a trifle overfed and sadly underexercised, found the pace telling on them.

It was too much of a good thing, they said to themselves. First one and then the other lagged behind at the end of its leader, and finally they tugged till their collars slipped up about their ears. Mrs. Lawrence looked around impatiently to see what was delaying her progress, and stopped suddenly.

"You poor little things," she said, stooping and tucking one under either

arm.

She turned toward the carriage, and then paused. "I can't go home," she said. "I won't. It's too disappointing." Two big childish tears filled her eyes.

She sat down on a bench near the avenue, and the dogs curled up close to her and went to sleep. Their mistress's mental thermometer had dropped with depressing suddenness. The Lawrence mansion had become a hated prison, and Smith a stern jailer who would close the door on her entrance. Her husband had grown to be a cruel and neglectful person; while the little dinner she had planned took on the proportions of an important engagement, which both love and courtesy should have forbidden him to break.

Mr. Tom Lawrence hung in the balance, while his wife piled his stepmother, his stepmother's butler, and all the unpleasant features of her present life in the opposite pan of the scales. Tom flew into the air at once. Then love hung on and pulled him down bit by bit, till indignation jerked at the other side. They were wavering doubtfully, when Pitti Sing awoke and stretched herself.

At the other end of the bench sat a woman in much the same attitude as Mrs. Lawrence. The other woman's head was bowed a little more and her hands were clasped together. And while Mrs. Lawrence's mouth was set sternly, it was a temporary and superficial sternness, but the lips of the stranger were pressed together as if to shut in a cry of suffering.

Pitti Sing looked searchingly at her.

Then she walked across the space between them and peered up into her face. Two brown unseeing eyes looked straight into two brown inquiring ones.

Pitti Sing whined. There was no response. Pitti Sing pulled her leader from her mistress's undetaining grasp and climbed into the woman's lap over the clenched hands. Placing her paws on the woman's chest, she whined louder. The unseeing eyes opened a little wider, and a look of interest crept into them. Pitti Sing wagged her diminutive tail encouragingly. The woman's hands unclosed and touched the soft coat of Pitti Sing. The tail wagged faster, and a small pink tongue hung over the edge of tiny white teeth in a smile of good-fellowship.

The pale, set features relaxed, moved convulsively, and, with a sob, the little dog was gathered up into a crushing and unexpected embrace.

The scales that Mrs. Lawrence was busy with were left with their contents hanging in mid-air, and Justitia laid aside her rôle to become once more a loving, sympathetic woman, with a heart big enough to include friend and stranger, and to make one of the other as occasion demanded.

She slid toward the shaking figure, dislodging Toto and depositing him on the ground.

"What's the matter, you poor child? Are you ill?" she asked.

The sobs ceased, and there was quieta tense quiet that betokened a painful effort at self-control.

Mrs. Lawrence understood. "Don't try not to cry," she said, softly. “It hurts awfully not to cry." As she spoke, she tucked a handkerchief into the hand that held Pitti Sing and patted the arm near her own.

The homely, unconsidered action, the friendly touch, broke down all effort at self-control, and a shower of tears drenched Pitti Sing's coat and Mrs. Lawrence's handkerchief impartially. The sobs died away, and a face with flushed cheeks and wet eyes rose above Pitti Sing's head and turned to its neighbor.

"How good you are!" said the stran

Here Pitti Sing struggled to free herself. It was all very well to be friendly, but she had been squeezed too hard. Moreover, the strange lady was talking, and so she must feel better. According to Pitti Sing's ideas, when people talked they felt better.

"Pitti Sing is a dear dog," remarked Mrs. Lawrence, looking carefully in another direction as the other woman dried her eyes and set her hat straight. "She's almost human, I often say. Twice as knowing as Toto, though I'm fond of them both."

The stranger looked at her gratefully. "I beg you to believe that I am not in the habit of sitting on park benches and enlisting sympathy in this fashion," she said, in a tone of mingled apology and annoyance. "I wouldn't have believed I could be so stupid." "No one saw you except me," said Mrs. Lawrence, in a matter-of-fact voice, "and you needn't mind me in the least. Why, when I sat down here I could have cried myself, with disappointment and

rage.

If I had been a small girl instead of a grown married woman, I should probably have screamed and slapped my nurse. Maybe I should have cried in another minute anyway, if you hadn't. I can't tell."

The other woman laughed, a soft little laugh, and then stopped suddenly. "I don't believe I've laughed before in weeks," she said. "That's another thing to thank you for." Then she handed the tear-stained bit of lace and linen to Mrs. Lawrence. "It's awfully mussed," she said.

"That's nothing," said Mrs. Lawrence, tucking the handkerchief into her chatelaine. "And I have to thank you for crying and saving me the trouble."

The woman laughed again. "I believe I'm getting normal again,” she remarked; I'm getting back my sense of humor."

ly?" she asked, abruptly. "So lonely that it seemed that you would die if you couldn't speak and tell some one how lonely you were?"

Mrs. Lawrence nodded. "I know," she said. "I wasn't lonely, but I knew I was going to be, and that's what made me come and sit down here. I couldn't bear to go home." She reached down for the dogs' leaders. "We didn't like it, did we, Pitti Sing, to dine all alone?"

Here she realized that she was talking rather freely and personally with a stranger, and that stranger's need of sympathy having apparently been supplied, a natural reserve made her rise to her feet to depart.

But the other woman was still reaching out. She had not quite gained her mental balance.

"Dine alone!" she was saying. "I have dined alone every night for weeks, and it seems centuries. I've been walking round and round this park to see if I couldn't get tired and hungry enough not to mind it to-night. But I believe it's going to be worse than ever."

Her big brown eyes were tear-stained and very appealing. She rose and held out her hand. "I have been alone so long that I've forgotten how to act when any one speaks to me," she said, with a tremulous smile. "Forgive this ridiculous wail, won't you? Good-by."

Mrs. Lawrence took the hand, but did not drop it at once.

"Too?" repeated the other.

"Yes, too. I must be abnormal to fly into a temper and feel myself abused just because-well, for almost nothing."

"Sometimes," said the other woman, "the almost-nothings are the last bits of the big somethings. Were you ever lone

“How delightful-" she began. "But you don't know me.”

"Neither do you know me, but I'm sure we shall like each other. Come on, Toto; come, Pitti Sing."

The other woman caught her breath. A childlike smile came to her lips. "Oh, if I could-" she said, doubtfully.

"Well, you can, and you're going to. There! don't cry again, or I shall too, and we won't look nice for my dinner party. We'll have a lovely time. Here, you take Pitti Sing's leader. Come on, Toto."

II

"I could put a porch on that end, and there's just room enough this side the stable for a rose-garden. That would suit Meg down to the ground. It's more than I wanted to pay, but, hang it all! a man's got to have a home. What's the odds if it does leave my bank-account a bit sick-looking? I can earn more. I'm tired of living with the old lady, and I'll bet Meg is too, though she's too decent sort to complain."

With this disrespectful reference to his stepmother and characteristic compliment to his wife, Tom extracted from his case a large cigar and carefully lighted it. He paced the back porch slowly and with a delightful sense of proprietorship. "Meg shall have her trap too-what's the odds?" he went on; "and maybe I can squeeze out a couple of saddlehorses, if my C. B. A. goes up. Where on earth is that confounded cab? Rexford said he'd send it right over. I'll get a bite at the club and chase home and tell Meg all about it. Hope she wasn't cut up because I didn't dine home; seemed to want me for some special reason. Well, when I tell her about this Hi, there! what you doing?" He broke off suddenly in his musings to call to a figure that was crossing the lawn from the stables.

Having in his mind already bought the place, made several desirable improvements, renamed it from "The Poplars" (without a poplar in sight) to "Rose Manor" (the rose-trees were yet to be planted), Tom felt a certain responsibility, a householder's right and duty, as it were, to know who was crossing his lawn from his stable in that suspicious fashion.

"Hi!" he called again.

At the unceremonious address, the man turned and raised his hat.

"I beg your pardon," he said. Then, coming nearer: "I didn't know the place had been sold. I have been taking a look at the stables. The caretaker should have told me they had changed hands."

In the gathering dusk Tom saw a man about his own age, whose face looked unnaturally pale, and whose hair showed prematurely white under the rim of his hat.

"I was rather hasty, my friend," apologized the embryo owner of "Rose Manor." "Fact is, I don't own the place yet, but I expect to, as soon as the papers can be made over and the check signed. Really, it doesn't belong to me now any more than it does to you, so I'm afraid I was a bit previous, not to say discourteous."

Tom's apology brought a smile to the stranger's face.

"The darkness may have been responsible for your taking me for a tramp," he said, "and I can quite understand that feeling of ownership."

"Pretty good sort of a place," remarked Tom.

"Pretty good sort," replied replied the stranger.

"Do you know the owner?" asked Tom.

"I used to be here a good deal," returned the man; "I was looking in the stable to see if 'The Lady' was there, but the traps and horses are all gone." "The Lady?" questioned Tom. "A roan mare."

"That must be the one Rexford thought I could get for my wife," said Tom. "He said the horses had all been sold except this one, and that he thought the owner would let her go at a reasonable price now. Says she's a dandy little roadster."

"She is," said the stranger, adding hastily, "Used to see Mrs. Carleton driving her a good deal.”

"Live near here?" asked Tom.
"No," answered the
man;

moved."

"I've

During the conversation he had been gazing about nervously, bending his slender walking-stick back and forth. Tom watched him with an impersonal interest at first, then curiously.

The man's manner was queer, and Tom, who was unsuspicious by nature, but could on occasion reach swift conclusions, suddenly announced to himself, "He was in love with her "; after which womanlike intuition manly reason asserted itself and cried out, "He wants to