to the dance-halls—I would come after supper and spend the rest of the evening there. Sometimes the Shorniks would drop in—Sadie, her husband, and Beckie. Ben Shornik and Max would play a game of pinochle, while I, who never cared for cards, would chat with the women or entertain them by entertaining the children. Ben—as I came into the habit of calling him—was a spare little man with an extremely high forehead. He was an insurance-collector and only one degree less illiterate than Max; but because he had the "forehead of a learned man," and because it was his business to go from house to house with a long, thick book under his arm, he affected longish hair, flowing black neckties, and a certain pomposity of manner. One of his ways of being tremendously American was to snap his fingers ferociously and to say, "I don't care a continental!" or, "One, two, three, and there you are!" The latter exclamation he would be continually murmuring to himself when he was absorbed in pinochle.

CHAPTER V

ONE evening, when the Shorniks and I were at Max's house, and Max and Ben were having their game of pinochle, the conversation between the women and myself turned upon Dora's efforts to obtain education through her little daughter. Encouraged by Sadie and myself, Dora let herself loose and told us much of Lucy's history, or, rather, of her own history as Lucy's mother. In her crude, lumbering way and with flushed cheeks she talked with profound frankness and quaint introspective insight, in the manner of one touching upon things that are enshined in innermost recesses of one's soul

She depicted the thrills of joyous surprise with which she had watched Lucy, in her infancy, master the beginnings of speech. Sometimes her delight would be accompanied by something akin to fright. There had been moments when it all seemed unreal and weird

"The little thing seemed to be a stranger to me," she said. "Or else, she did not seem to be a human being at all."

The next moment she would recognize her, as it were, and then she would kiss and yearn over her in a mad rush of passion

The day when she took Lucy to school—about two years before—was one of the greatest days in Dora's life. She would then watch her learn to associate written signs with spoken words as she had once watched her learn to speak.

But that was not all. She became jealous of the child. She herself had never