The Coming of Bill

rlude o

e in the small world wh

about this time. The f

ond the exit o

introduced by Steve, who, it seemed, had known her since she was a child. She was the nineteen-year-old daughter of a compositor on one of the mo

hrough to the office-boy age without mishap, put her extremely high in the class of gifted amateurs. Mamie was accordingly given a trial, and survived it triumphantly. William Bannister, that discerning youth, took to her at once. Kirk liked the neat way she moved about the studio, his heart

presence, still less to converse with her, without experiencing a warm, clammy, shooting sensation and a feeling of general weakness similar to that which follows a well-directed blow at the solar plex

t it over. When Mamie joined the garrison of No. 90 a year later the dashing feat was still unperformed. There was that about Mamie which unmanned Steve. She was so small and dainty th

isfied. Accustomed to rule, she found herself in an unexpectedly minor position. She had definite views on the hy

und Ruth considerably less malleable than she had

ne afternoon, fou

robes. It's the new idea. Sterilization, and all that. She thinks that everything a child touches ought to be s

nding up. It was a peculiarity of his that he refused to sit down in a bath, being apparent

w the kid could

ill your flesh creeps. Honestly, if Bill ever did get really ill, I believe Aunt Lora could talk me round to h

lau

r. I've caught myself wavering a dozen times. Do y

, if I may make the suggestion, is the least bit of what Steve w

and sterilized everything, and the temperature ought to be just so high and no higher, and just so

surely? Has she ever broke

often used to talk about it. S

bout the selfishness of the mod

he baby. It's no good the modern young man marrying if

How am I going to provide these things on an income of five thousand and at the same time live in that luxury which the artist soul d

d before you catch your death of cold." S

that infant," remarked Kirk. "He'd simply flatten it out in

became really marked. There was something almost approaching a battle over Whiskers, who was an Iris

r certainly gave them every chance to get to work upon himself. It was his constant pleasure to clutch Whiskers to him in a vice-like clinch, to bury his face in his shagg

sent. She was in the position of a mother country whose colony has revolted. For years she had been accustomed to lo

go there, but she kept away from the studio. She considered that in the matter of Wi

great natural force which may become active at any moment and give you yours. An earthquake, for instance. I have no quarre

a dear. And we ought to remember that, if it hadn

in a new place. My gratitude to her is the sort of gratitude you would feel toward a cyclone if you were walking home late for dinner and it caught you up and deposited you on your doorstep. Your Aunt Lora is a human cyclone. No, o

members outside the family itself. Hank was generally out of town. Bailey paid one more visit, then seemed to con

iety, had made few real friends. Most of the girls she had known bored her. They were gushing creature

of her wedding gave people something to talk a

ell for three and enjoyed this highly unnatural state of things enormously. Life had never seemed so full either to Kirk or herself. There was always so