The Beloved Woman

They all sat in Leslie's room, and laughed as they reached for crumpets, and marvelled at th

"talk books and things." The barriers between such girls as this one and herself, Norma was honest enough to admit, were largely of her own imagining. They were neither so contemptibl

little phrases as she introduced to Marion and Doris the young lady who picked out books for Aunt Alice, had all helped to crush out the vaguely hostile impulse Norma Sheridan had toward rich little members of a society she only knew by hearsay. Norma had f

to Leslie's dressing-room, and Leslie's maid went obsequiously to and fro, and the girls talked almost

ld twilight began to settle over the snowy city. Leslie and Norma came back to the fire, and were st

ach other, palin

k at Norma, ran to the hall door. As she opened it Mrs. Sheridan opened

grandmother's maid-somebody! She fee

and Joseph had run upstairs. Leslie had only one glimpse of her grandmother, leaning against Regina's arm, and drinking from a glass of

tired, walking in the wind. She's quite all right-you can go in immediatel

ldly asked that Mrs. Sheridan would please step back for a minute. Mrs. Sheridan immed

t frightened tears had dried from bewilderment and curiosity

Miss Melrose,

her wet lashes, made a sudden impression upon Norma's heart. Leslie hung childishly on the upstairs balustrad

old blue of the street, and almost persuaded her aunt to take the omnibus up the Avenue. But Mrs. Sheridan p

hey had only one slippery, cold, dark block to walk. But when they had reached the flat, and snappe

he matter with that

nd pamper themselves as if they were babies," her aunt retu

g with arrested knife. "That wasn't wh

at the oven of the gas

ld hear that

ey heard it

affections, Mrs. Melrose, and when she gets thinking of Theodore, and of Alice's accident, and this and that, she'll go right off the handle. She had been

Aunt Kate? Do you

an opener into a can of corn with

sted, now dropping her peeled p

hat years ago, when your Uncle Tom died, and I was left with two babies, and not much money, a friend of mine, a milliner she was, told me that she knew a lady that wan

as I, Au

hree, and Rose a year o

ma said, sententiously. "I w

married woman!" her aunt said. "Salt those potatoes, darling. Nor

was at

recalled. "I know-you put a little cornstarch in, to give it b

d me. And then she talked me into going to France with her, but I cried all the way for my children, and I was glad enough to come home again! She and Miss Annie spent some time over there, but I came back. Miss Alice was in

that Leslie," Norma said,

but she was very proud. Theodore's wife was a good girl, but she was Miss Annie's maid, and what Mrs. Melrose never could forgive was that when she ordered the girl ou

face from the pan where she was dexterously crisping bacon. "What business is it of hers if her son marries a working girl? Tha

d when Leslie was about four or five he came back to his mother to die-poor fellow! It was a terrible sorrow to the old lady-she'd had her share, one way and another! My goodness, Norma," Mrs. Sheridan interrupt

overs Sunday!" Norma kissed her aunt, brushed a dab of cornstarch from the older woman's firm cheek, and performed a sort of errat

of it, but it's no life for a girl. My dear," she added, seriously, holding Norma with a firm arm, and look

Norma asked, frowning a little in curios

, her operations at the sink. "Well, nothing may come of it-we'll see!" she added, briskly. Norma, who was watching her expectantly, sighed disappointedly; the subject was too e

they had all gone down on the ice together. And then at the shop nobody had come in, and the lights had been lighted, and the clerks had all gathered together and talked. Then Aunt Kate had come in to have lunch, and to have Norma go with her to t

into a nervous convulsion. You did, Aunt Kat

or your impudence!" her aunt said, fondly. But R

d a nervous convulsion, too. Y

cuss with Mrs. Melrose," Mrs. Sherida

concurred, with his ready lau

other said, mildly, over her second

sual flight of stained and shabby steps, its doorway showing a set of some dozen letter-boxes, and looking down upon a basement entrance frequently embellished with ash-cans and milk-bottles, and, just at present, with banks of soiled and sooty snow. The Sheridans cl

m and life's cold realities for some twenty courageous years. Kate idolized her own two children and her foster-child with a passion that is the purest and the strongest in the world. In possessing them, she thought herself the most blessed of women. To keep a roof over their heads, to watch them progress triumphantly through long division and measles and skates, to see milk glasses emptied and plates scraped, to realize that Wolf was as strong morally as he was physically, and that all her teachers

st of course oblige her brother, sew on the button, or take his book to the library; Wolf must always protect the girls, and consider them. Wolf firmly believed his sister and cous

s as habitually teased and annoyed each other, would have struck them as fantastic. Perhaps Kate herself hardly knew the power of her own will upon them. Her commands in their babyhood had not been couched in the language of modern child-analysts, nor had she given, or been abl

about each other,

the patent rocker, and the Rover rug. They laughed, gossiped, munched candy, and experimented in love-making quite as happily as did Leslie and her own intimates. They streamed out into the streets, and sauntered along under the lights to the moving pictures, or on hot summer

ll bronzes, and flawless glass. The girls began to feel that a plain cartridge paper and net curtains might well replace the parlour's florid green scrolling and Nottingham lace. But they did not worry about it; it served as a topic to am

and Norma, and Kate, too, felt in their souls that Rose's hour had come. Young Harry Redding was a big, broad, rather inarticulate fellow, whose humble calling was not the more attractive to the average young woman because he supported hi

ips. Norma was opposite Rose, and by falling back heavily could tip her entire chair against the sideboard, from which she extracted forks or salt or candy, as the case might

even then. Chattering and busy, they hustled the hot plates onto their shelves, rattled the hot plated ware into its basket, clanked saucepans, and splashed water. Not fifteen minutes after the serving of the dessert the last signs of the meal had been obliterated, and Kate was guilty of what the girls called "making excuses" to linger in the kitc

a great wave of silky dark hair across her white forehead, and put the fur-trimmed hat at a dashing angle. The lace blouse, th

he said, as they

Norma slipped her little hand, in its shabby glove, th

arkness. Stars were out; and whether Norma was blinking up at them, or staring into lighted windows of candy stores and fruit markets, her own eyes danced and twinkled. The elevated trains thundered above their heads, and the s

ence to Wilson's face, and Wolf explained that, too. Norma knew that he understood everything of that nature, but she liked to impress him, too, and did so far more often than she realized, with her book-lore. When Norma spoke lightly of a full calf edition de luxe of the Sonnets from the Portuguese, she might almost have been speaking in that language for all she conveyed to Wolf, but he watched the animated face proudly just the same. Rose had always been good and steady and thoughtful, but Wolf knew tha

ence from her, and took the two statements on their face value. "Now, I know I'm not pretty," she continued, following, as wa

u that you're not p

but Wolf's mind was honestly busy with this assertion, and he did not speak. Wasn't she pretty?

uld

u who you would like," Norma added, in

Wolf asked, in

ts more. You know, in a pleasant, careless sort of way, not a bit as if he was showing off. And I'll tell you what he did. Miss Drake was showing him a pottery bowl one day, and she dropped it, and she told me he sort of caught at it with his hand, and

baby was very cunning, with her bright eyes and indignant mouth. H

to g

Aunt Kate care?

use. It was nine o'clock; the performance was fairly under way. Norma rustled into a seat beside her companion without moving

hear the unending confidences. Norma thought she had never seen anything better, and even

re murmuring in the dimly lighted parlour. Wolf, who was of the slow-thinking, intense type that discovers a new world every time it reads a new book, was halfway through a shabby library copy of "War and Peace," and went