But to all suggestions Dan doggedly shook his head. He was "thinkin' it out," he said, and all he wanted was to be let alone. "Well, you can't set there all night," said Mrs. Snawdor, "if yer maw don't turn up by five o'clock, us neighbors is goin' to take a hand." All afternoon Dan sat watching the corner round which his mother might still appear. Not a figure had turned into the alley, that he had not seen it, not a clanging car had stopped in the street beyond, that his quick ear had not noted. About the time the small hand of the cathedral clock got around to four, Nance Molloy came skipping home from school. She had been kept in for a too spirited resentment of an older girl's casual observation that both of her shoes were for the same foot. To her, as to Dan, these trying conventions in the matter of foot-gear were intolerable. No combination seemed to meet the fastidious demands of that exacting sixth grade. "Hello, Dan!" she said, coming to a halt at sight of the obstructed pavement. "What's all this for?" "Put out," said Dan laconically. "Didn't yer maw never come back?" "Nope." Nance climbed up beside him on the bedclothes and took her seat. "What you goin' to do?" she asked in a business-like tone. "Dunno." Dan did not turn his head to look at her, but he felt a dumb comfort in her presence. It was as if her position there beside him on the pillory made his humiliation less acute. He shifted the water pitcher, and jerked his thumb over his shoulder: "They all want to divide the things an' take keer of 'em 'til she comes," he said, "but I ain't goin' to let 'em." "I wouldn't neither," agreed Nance. "Old man Smelts an' Mr. Gorman'd have what they took in hock before mornin'. There's a coal shed over to Slap Jack's ain't full. Why can't you put yer things in there for to-night?" "He wouldn't let me. He's a mean old Dutchman." "He ain't, neither! He's the nicest man in the alley, next to Uncle Jed an' that there old man with the fiddle. Mr. Jack an' me's friends. He gives me pretzels all the time. I'll go ast him." A faint hope stirred in Dan as she slid down from her perch and darted into the saloon next door. She had wasted no time in conjecture or sympathy; she had plunged at once into action. When she returned, the fat saloonkeeper lumbered in her wake: "Dose tings is too many, already," he protested. "I got no place to put my coal once de cold vedder comes." "It ain't come yet," said Nance. "Besides his mother'll be here to-morrow, I 'spect." "Mebbe she vill, und mebbe she von't," said the saloonkeeper astutely. "I don't want dat I should mess up myself mid dis here piziness."