with banks of soiled and sooty snow. The Sheridans climbed three long flights inside, to their own rooms, but as this gained them a glimpse of river, and a sense in summer of airiness and height, to say nothing of pleasant nearness to the roof, they rarely complained of the stairs—in fact, rarely thought of them at all.

With the opening of their own door, however, all likeness to their neighbours ceased. Even in a class where home ties and home comforts are far more common than is generally suspected, Kate Sheridan was exceptional, and her young persons fortunate among their kind. Her training had been, she used to tell them, "old country" training, but it was not only in fresh linen and hot, good food that their advantage lay. It was in the great heart that held family love a divine gift, that had stood between them 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 called Rose an angel, to spoil and adore the beautiful, mischievous, and amusing "Baby"; this made a life full to the brim, for Kate, of pride and happiness. Kate had never had a servant, or a fur coat; for long intervals she had not had a night's unbroken rest; and there had been times, when Wolf's fractured arm necessitated a doctor's bill, or when coal for the little Detroit house had made a disproportionate hole in her bank account, in which even the thrifty Kate had known biting financial worry.

But the children never knew it. They knew only her law of service and love. They must love each other, whatever happened. There was no quarrelling at meals at Kate's house. Rose must 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 cousin to be the sweetest girls in the world; Rose and Norma regarded Wolf as perfection in human form. They rarely met without embraces, never without brightening eyes and light hearts.

That this attitude toward each other was only the result of the healthy bodies and honest souls that Kate had given them they would hardly have believed. That her resolute training had literally forced them to love and depend upon themselves in a world where brothers and sisters 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 able to give, any particular reason for her law. But the instinct by which she drew Wolf's attention to his sister's goodness, or noted Wolf's cleverness for Rose's benefit, was better than any reason. She summed the situation up simply for the few friends she had, with the phrase:

"They're all crazy about each other, every one of them!"

Kate's parlour would have caused Annie von Behrens actual faintness. But it was a delightful place to Rose and Wolf and their friends. The cushioned divan on Sunday nights customarily held a row of them, the upright ebony piano sifted popular music impartially upon the taboret, 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 nights they perched like tiers of birds on the steps, and the world and youth seemed sweet to them. In Kate's dining-room, finished in black wood and red paper, they made Welsh rarebits and fudge, and in Kate's spotless kitchen odours of toast and coffee rose at unseemly hours.

Lately, Rose and Norma had been talking of changes. Rose was employed in an office whose severe and beautiful interior decoration had cost thousands of dollars, and Norma's Old Book Room was a study in dull carved woods, Oriental rugs, dull 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 amuse their leisure hours. The subject was generally routed by a shrewd allusion, from Norma or Wolf, to the sort of parlour people would like if they got married, married to someone who was doing very well in the shoe business, for example.

These allusions deepened the colour in Rose's happy face; she had been "going" for some three months with an attractive young man who exactly met these specifications—not her first admirer, not noticeable for any especial quality, yet Rose 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 his mother by it. But he suited Rose, more, he seemed wonderful to Rose, and because her dreams had always been humble and self-sacrificing, Harry was a thousand times more than she had dreamed. She felt herself the luckiest girl in the world.

Kate sat at the head of her table, and Wolf at the foot. Rose, a gentle, quiet copy of her handsome mother, was nearest the kitchen door, to which she made constant flying trips. 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 be. The telephone was in the dining-room, Wolf's especial responsibility, and Mrs. Sheridan herself occasionally left the table for calls to the front door or the dumb-waiter.

To-night, after supper, the girls flew through their share of clearing-up. It never weighed very heavily upon them; they usually began the process of piling and scraping dishes before they left the table, Rose whisking the tablecloth into its drawer as Norma bumped through the swinging door with the last dishes, and Kate halfway through the washing 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 kitchen. She was mixing cereal, storing cold potatoes and cut bread, soaking dish-towels. But these things did not belong to the duties of Norma and Rose, and the younger girl could flash with a free conscience to the little room she shared with Rose. Wolf had called out for a companion, they were going to take a walk and see what the blizzard had done!

Norma washed her face, the velvety skin emerging with its bloom untouched, the lips crimson, the blue eyes blazing. She pressed a great wave of silky dark hair across her white forehead, and put the fur-trimmed hat at a dashing angle. The lace blouse, the pearl beads, her fur-collared coat again, and Norma was ready to dance out beside Wolf as if fatigue and labours did not exist.

"Where's Rose?" he said, as they went downstairs.

"Oh, Wolf—Saturday night! Harry's coming, of course!" Norma slipped her little hand, in its shabby glove, through his big arm. "She and Aunt Kate were gossiping!"

"Suits me!" Wolf said, contentedly. He held her firmly on the slippery lumps of packed snow. The sidewalks were almost impassable,