and went away somewhere, and came home tired at night.

Shrill-voiced children disputed the middle of the street with honking motors and clattering wagons as she passed along. She thought of the serenity of Maple Avenue, in Paola, and marveled that children could survive this kind of life. Could even she survive it? And how long would she want to?

Midway down the block, she turned and climbed the steps of a house. Mingled and unappetizing odors, combined with basement clatterings, met her in the hall. Dinner was under way. Listlessly she ran her fingers through the litter of letters and papers scrambled together, boarding-house style, on the battered hall table.

There was one letter for her, a specialdelivery letter. The first happiness of the day came to her when she recognized upon the envelop the long, angular handwriting of Stella Arnold. Stella! She had hoped that she might hear from Stella to-day; but she had hardly dared to hope it, for Stella had not written in a long time. Surely the letter would give her news of Luther, too.

She carried it up-stairs with her, tearing the envelop open as she went. She had told Luther not to write, but he might have disobeyed her, just this once, upon her birthday!

She opened the door of her room. Her room! A room which now, after eleven months, she entered with almost the same feeling of strangeness she had felt on her first sight of it. Yet how well she knew that room,-how horribly well!- with its wall of feverish roses and its blatant flowered carpet, worn drab before the dresser and beside the bed.

So it was n't a mistake; the piano was really for her, Stella's beautiful piano! Glory dropped to the bench, and ran her hands over the shiny surface of the top. Then suddenly she bent her head against it and wept. And she had thought that Stella was forgetting her! Beautiful, generous, loyal Stella!

For a long time she sat there, motionless. When at last she raised her head, the light was fading. There in front of her, on the piano, was the special-delivery letter from Stella, still unread.

She carried it to the window:

My dearest Glory:

Many happy returns of the day! I cannot tell you how I hope that the piano has already reached you. Dad made the express company promise faithfully to deliver it on the morning of your birthday so as to surprise you. And you must n't feel one bit backward about accepting it, because I have n't touched it in months. I've given up all hopes of ever getting anywhere with my music. And I can't tell you how proud I 'll be if my piano is in any way connected with your glorious career, for in Paola we all feel that you are destined to be famous.

And, Glory dear, I 've something very surprising to tell you! And you 're the very first person I 've told, too! Luther and I both want you to know of our great happiness before anybody else. Because it was through our mutual fondness for you, Glory, that Luther and I first got interested in each other. We both feel that you belong to us, in a way, and you may be quite certain that nobody is going to watch your progress with more pride than we will.

There, polished and enormous, bulging out magnificently into the center of the room from the corner in which it had been placed, stood a grand piano!

When she had recovered from her first amazement, she crossed the room, and opened the lid. There on the keys lay

a card:

To dearest Glory, with loving wishes for a happy birthday,

from Stella.

regard the sheets in her hand.

After a time she moved slowly to the dresser. Pausing there, she bent the pages of the letter backward at the crease. Then, at the exact center of the dressertop, she placed them in a flat, neat-edged pile, an alien square between the familiar ovals of her hairbrush and her mirror.

Turning, she regarded the piano with the same look of curiosity. She crossed to it, and once more let her fingers wander over its polished surfaces. Yes, it was a beautiful piano!

current of apology in her tone; and old Margaret, who had been in Miss Jane's service long enough almost to forget the native-born "ita" that straight-spoken lady had clipped from her baptismal appellation when first the two had joined forces, sniffed scornfully.

"Jus' love never buy black beans an' bread an' butter," she averred with open contumely. "There be time for make love when the work all done. At presen' it is the proper occupation of Antonio to irrigate the señora's tomatoes.'

Angelita sighed over the ceaseless demands of agriculture, and said nothing. To her untutored youth, it was hard that her chosen idol should be summarily dismissed from the veranda shadow when he had proclaimed himself so ingenuously willing to shell frijoles until the big pan was empty, and the dried pods all duly consigned to the shuck-box at her side. The austere voice of her mistress over her head startled her into guilty consciousness of her slow, brown fingers.

"Come to me in the front room when you have finished the beans, Angelita." 'Angel" would have been absurd. The Puritan, common-sense ex-New Englander had had perforce to retain here the distasteful Spanish diminutive. She had considered both "Anna" and "Angie" as more suitable to her menage. The one was too German blond, the other too angular: neither appealingly fitted this warm olive sprite her faithful cook had induced into her kitchen as the evil days drew nigh when that worthy matron must lay aside the scepter for the inglenook. To Miss Jane, while she secretly felt the charm of it, it was almost unchristian to be so

pretty. Her thin lips set in their firmest fold, and her forehead ruffled into the hint of a frown, as she formulated what she

the moral responsibility of so young a handmaiden was like to prove a troublesome chapter in her uneventful household experience.

Despite her already long Southwestern sojourn, Miss Crother marveled at Angelita's grace as she stood in the doorway, recalling half-shrinkingly her own awkward, years-past adolescence. The reproof hard on her tongue reframed itself into a sharp-voiced question: "Margaret tells me you have absolutely no living relatives: why does that young man from next door come over the fence so often?"

"He love me," murmured Angelita, sweetly drooping. Miss Jane gasped: it was a good deal like going under the cold spray of her white, well-appointed bath. At sixteen she herself would have been shocked at the remotest suggestion of a lover. But she remembered, with a sigh for the task before her, that Mexican blood runs differently.

"He neglects his work for his courting, and will make you neglect yours if he does not mend his ways," she said stiffly. "While you are in my house, I consider that you are under my care: if this fellow wishes to marry you, we must teach him industry and patience. Make him understand that he may come over here only between supper-time and sundown, and we 'll see what stuff he is made of."

"Margarita already she tell him," sighed the culprit, unwilling, but submissive.

Miss Jane nodded appreciation. "Margaret is a person of ripe sense: I commend you to her counsel," she replied with stately formality. "You may go now, Angelita. But remember: no man makes a good husband unless he can work with a will, regardless of outside attractions."

Angelita bobbed dutifully, and slipped

and the document had sworn to eighteen years. In any case, it was better not to let the pair go away together unwedded. Miss Jane thought so, too, and her virgin breast's unwonted beating sensibly allayed, gave way to a natural pique that her good advice and interest had gone for naught.

For two months she regarded the incident as closed. Old Margaret had a homely, handy little Maria, aged thirteen, to do the dishes and shell beans, and she spoke to her of Angelita with angry scorn as an example to be avoided.

Angelita flung down the knife with which she was dexterously paring wideeyed Maria's potatoes, and flew across the room, apparently oblivious of the forbidding gaze focused upon her flushed countenance. "I feel so shame to steal off from you, you are so kin'," she half-sobbed, half-laughed. "But "Tonio love me so mooch he weel no go 'way to the beeg job onless I go."

Miss Crother's reply failed signally of the harshness with which she had fully intended to charge it. The girl's genuine display of feeling, her naïve, reiterating explanation, touched curiously certain long-laid susceptibilities. She listened with a self-surprising tolerance while the radiant little wife poured out, in freshfound assurance, her summer's adven

tures.

Lopez had joined the construction crew on the railroad, was contemplating so doing before ever the señora dispensed with his services: it was much better pay than

he had been wont to receive for ranch work. And she, Angelita, had queened it in the shanty camp, youngest of all the married women. None other had had a husband so devoted, she asserted proudly; her man came a dozen times a day to see how she was faring, until the old crones voted him a nuisance, and, scolding, drove him off with their dishcloths.

But it was not like keeping house in a clean kitchen, she declared to her still listener, with a fond eye for her abandoned surroundings. Having gone her own gait on the road to happiness, her warm young affection came back spontaneously to every item she had left behind. Although she had spurned their counsel with impunity, she would have quoted either Margaret or Miss Jane as her utmost authority. She confided to them brightly, with a delightful air of responsibility, how glad she was going to be to settle herself in the tiny house over the river that had belonged to Antonio's father, and made gay little plans

for embellishing her nest after the pattern here set before her.

Miss Jane's lineaments softened steadily despite her latent doubt. When Antonio appeared, red and sheepish, but covertly triumphant at sight of the phalanx he had flouted, she was almost gracious, calling the girl back from eager inspection of sundry household commodities packed into a rickety wagon, to insist with regal mien that she report often to old Margaret, and submit for that motherly worthy's solving all the odd problems of her 'prentice housekeeping.

IT was several weeks later that, happening to be across the river on business, she took a sudden determination to look up the Lopez location, excusing herself to herself with the plea that, the little Mexican having been launched upon the world direct from under her own supervision, it was only right for her to take an active Interest in the child's menage.

The surroundings grew momentarily more squalid as the lady proceeded. Queerly carpentered buildings shouldered

one another at strange angles; the street degenerated to a meandering track which strove ineffectually to dodge the tin cans and refuse tossed impartially upon its surface. She found it necessary to inquire her way of various ill-favored inhabitants; and the set of her epaulets was uncompromising, her skirts were drawn around her gaiters in patent disgust, as she turned into a miserable cross-alley flanked by the most tumble-down row of cabins she had yet seen. But Angelita had a spotless muslin at her window, and the little sitting-room-bedroom was shining clean. Miss Jane remembered old Margaret's struggles with the girl's native ways when first she came to the cottage, and was discreetly uplifted at such open evidence of her household's handiwork. Angelita, palpitating with pride at the honor of this visit, read approbation in her mistress's eye; but she colored, reminiscently uncomfortable, as a black head with a hat on was thrust through the kitchen door to call Adios.

"Why, Antonio!" the startled mentor gave vent to involuntary reproof. Her