And then one night, as Ida was coming around the corner to go to her father’s store at about seven-thirty and Stour was on his favorite corner with several other boys, he called: “I know who’s a sweet kid, but her daddy won’t let her look at a guy. Will he?” This last aimed directly at her as she passed, while she, knowing full well who was meant and how true it was, hurried on all the faster. If her father had heard that! Oh, my! But it thrilled her as she walked. “Sweet kid.” “Sweet kid”—kept ringing in her ears. And then at last, in her sixteenth year, Edward Hauptwanger moved into a large house in Grey Street. His father, Jacob Hauptwanger, was a well-to-do coal-dealer who had recently purchased a yard on the Absecon. It was about this time that Ida became keenly aware that her normal girlhood, with its so necessary social contacts, was being set at naught and that she was being completely frustrated by the stern and repressive attitude of her father and stepmother. The wonder and pain, for instance, of spring and summer evenings just then, when she would stand gazing at the moon above her own commonplace home—shining down into the narrow, commonplace garden at the back, where still were tulips, hyacinths, honeysuckle and roses. And the stars shining above Warren Avenue, where were the cars, the crowds, the moving-picture theatres and restaurants which held such charm for her. There was a kind of madness, an ache, in it all. Oh, for pleasure—pleasure! To go, run, dance, play, kiss with some one—almost any one, really, if he were only young and handsome. Was she going to know no one—no one? And, worse, the young men of the neighborhood calling to her as she passed: “Oh, look who’s here! Shame her daddy won’t let her out.” “Why don’t you bob your hair, Ida? You’d be cute.” Even though she was out of school now, she was clerking as before and dressing as before. No short skirts, bobbed hair, rolled-down stockings, rouge.