Jewel Weed

privilege of going shopping. Surely there is no other stream in the wide world that is so monotonous as this human never-ending current. The same types, the same clothes, th

oo much with us

nding we lay wa

laim their sins, like the long banner of bat-like souls t

o itself. Therefore among the strenuous, the hurrying, and the anxious-e

a, in spite of her carefully-groomed shabbiness, was by no means one of the herd. She affected one like a bit of Ti

rown so used to this tribute that it hardly affected her u

back unmoved from behind their plate-glass; though it was not the fixed and amiable smiles of the lay-figures that caught her a

r the chaff of the shabby and fixed itself on the wheat of the properly gowned. Sometimes she wove romances about her swiftly-disappearing actors, romances not of heart and soul but of garments, of splendors and of money; but even such entrancing tissues of her brain v

always forms a hard shell about every kernel of religion; and the pharisaism of the correct costume is the most complacent of all forms of self-righteousness.

d to come out of his lair. Spring refused to sit in his lap for more than an instant, but leaped from that affection

ddenly filled with tears at her own impotence. Why had God created her such as she was and then denied her the perquisites of her desires? It was as though nat

Easter hats and bonnets at the mirror that was meant to manifold their charms. She did not see the millinery, but there

ry curve of her body suggested hidden beauty, and the way she turned her head on her shoulders left one feeling how music and painting fall short of expressing the

self on her virtue. Certain it was that the admiration of the other sex never set her vibrating with delicate emotions, never increased by a single beat the pulses of her heart, except

did others, that some creature more celestial than ordinary humanity wondered from behind them at the world. She saw the fair soft curls that clung about her forehead, and the

sured herself. "After all, there is nothing more impor

tress, pert and pretty. The sight of it sent Lena

r dream. She saw again the fat man with the sensual mouth who had given her a job; and felt again her tingling resentment when she found how small the part was, and how poorly paid. She remembered how she had held herself aloof from the other girls, who, like herself, had trivial parts, and how they had snubbed her in return; how even the little that she did was made r

ill sure that she could play any part-except that of patient endurance. Yet, so far, hardship was all that life had offered her. A chance! That was

ho was lifted above the pharisaism of clothes into the purer ether. She was calm-eyed and well-poised, and Lena hated her for the rest of her life for her obliviousness of the sordid. Behind her walked a young man who now opened the carriage door and lingered a moment and laughed as he talked

inward comment. "But I'd just like to have people see me with a thing like that d

piece of ice. She made a desperate grab at the smooth surface of the window and then came ignominiousl

knew it instinctively and instantly. But the rose-petal face and the big eyes were overwhelmingly

you're n

." Lena smiled, because people are

ve not twisted your

hair," she pouted. "Thank y

uch of a res

ragedy and give you a chance to

I be the one to help?" he

to spend money on diamonds. The vision was so lovable that she lived with it all the way, even through the narrow entrance of the lodging-house and up the narrow stairs, saturated with obsolete smells-smells of dead dinners-to the very instant when she opened the upper door and faced bald reality and her mother. Mrs. Quincy sat by the window in a room on the walls of which the word "shabby" was writ

na what the faded rose is to the opening one, a once be

the corner, where a forlorn counterpane showed by the hollows and hills beneath that it ha

stead of being cooped up in this little room the way I am." Mrs. Quincy coughed with conscious pathos. "I sometimes wonder if you

t as cheerful as barbed wire. But you can comfort yourself

t's the m

ked sharply. "I'm ashamed to be seen in that old thing an

sed into the creaking com

I've got to look out we don't starve. If you'd only make up your mind to work and earn a little instead of livin' so pinched! I

d Lena sullenly. "I've got the blood of a

drinking, blood don't count much.

the girl. "I haven't any appetite

t them,

it, wors

e for a moment and then Len

e. I haven't been brought up as they have. The only thing you've taught me is tha

' is res

t know how to do anything. And I won't sink below the level of decent society.

y. I'm sure everything

near Madame Cerise's to-day and looked at some of the girls near the window, with their hair all la

mothers would have felt; but Mrs. Quincy was not

d you fifty times if I've told you once. He's got real good

came together

g else left but the poorhouse. It's pret

won't always be a mechanic, Le

e'll bear the marks of a mechanic

le and survey herself in the old green glass. This was her panacea fo

o you think all this is meant to scrub and sew and coo

ut her mother did

and marriage when I got your father; but he seemed to sort of flatten out and lose all his ambition after we was married. He didn't seem to car

eyed her sp

"You thought a good old name and a promising career were enough; and fa

d "he" were synonymous. "I don't notice any millionaires crowding u

to that chatty column headed "Woman's Fancies". She had read it with absorbed interest. Her body halted now, for the muscles often stop work when the mi

and her heart thumped uncomfortably. "And if I take i

sson that the best way of getting her own will with her mother

t for supper, mo

aid Mrs. Qui

e some money and let m

k open the mouth of a pocket into which she dived to return with a knotted handkerchief. Le

Lena, and do get something nourishing. Don't buy crea

s," answered the gir

t to make this last. Get some tea, Lena-green, remember. The beans won

anyway," Lena answered w

you wan

"I won't buy cream-cakes or anything t

's voice was instinct with hope, and hope was such a rare visitor in the din

iously when the girl came back. "My land! Only paper an