The Wolf Point herald. (Wolf Point, Mont.) 1913-1940, 1924-02-14
CHAPTER III

Turn eastward from the white
vaulted pomp and circumstance of tn
Grand Central station but two shor
blocks, and you come at once into an
other time and generation-the tim
of red bricks, of stuffed and stuff,
furniture,
1t was here, in this quiet backwa
ter of the great town, that Mary Man
chester's mother and father, witt
their lessening fortunes, had fnall,
lodged-drifting eastward from NOR,
prosperous streets, SO near in dis
.tance, yet socially so far away. AnC
with them, naturally, came the CIR
herself.
she reviewed it again-as one does
unpleasant matters toward the weary
end of day-while she was passing
eastward through the humid heat. She
saw again her mother in her gradual
fading-seated delicate and wistful-
faced, old-fashioned as a rose gera-
mum, at the south window of a back
tenement above the cluttered, sordid,
partitioned ugliness between two
blocks, a creature reared in more pro-
tected ways, and incapable of self-de-
Tense against her circumstances as a
pigeon in a net. She had been gone
for nearly a year now-struggling no
more with the biological problem, as
we might call it, offered by hostile
city life to a delicate and perhaps
Over-refned woman. Mary Manches-
ter herself was like her, it was said
as she recalled with more depression.
1t was not an especially hopeful
situation, she admitted, from any
angle. Why she should remain in it
at all was not clear to her, now that
a sudden possible jar in her daily
routine had resulted in her asking
herself the question. Why should she
tonight, exhausted, be going home to
prepare the evening meal in that
dingy place, for that man-no relative
Of hers-that indolent, good-looking
scamp, as one would say in the Ian
guage of the eighties, who had mar
ried her young widowed mother, and
whose only present tie to her was
through the painful downward process
of incidence and s~elf-indulgence and
idleness, and latterly much worse,
which had converted the dandy of the
earlier time to the dissipated old
drunken ruin of a back street of to-
day?
Home, she thought bitterly-was
there anything to be called home but
dead memories in that place which
she was now entering at the beginning
of another weary night? Not one, she
thought-and then a warmth of feel
ing and a light of anticipation in her
eyes contradicted her. There still was
at least Rags.
A dog, of course, has always been
the poor mans proverbial extrava-
gance.
She passed exhaustedly up the
stairs of the old "walk-up'' flat house,
sO-called, tt their four small rooms in
the rear, slipped in the key and
passed into the STIFFNESS of the small
place, crowded to distraction with the
long-kept furniture of larger rooms.
The opposite of what she had hoped
was true. The man was there; the
dog "a gone.
where is hep" she demanded, wor-
ried as always by the chance of his
escaping into city streets.
"Where-what?' he returned hazily.
"Rags?' she said, her face thinner
and wearier as she watched him.
tive sold him." he said, straighten-
ing up with dignity-the derby mean
while going to the floor.
"And now" she said, standing mo
tionless before him, you are drinking
up the price of him"
"Tha's right" he said to her, be
disagreeablei Tha's right--be dis
agreeable !" he said, moving his right
hand with weary oratorical effect.
"After all I've done for you'll"
The girl went out into the small
kitchen, in her black dress, to as
semble but not to cook the evening
meal.
whatever this may be-" she said,
her mind of course always upon the
odd and challenging venue Of escape
which she was about to hear of, "I'm
here, absolutely through"
And she passed out and closed for
the last time-though naturally she
did not herself expect quite that-the
door of the place, that stuffy ware