Something in her voice--he stopped rubbing the injured shin to look up at her. Then he straightened slowly, his mouth ludicrously open. Her head was bound in a white towel. Her skirt was pinned back. Her sleeves were rolled up. Chairs, tables, rugs, ornaments, were huddled in a promiscuous heap. Mrs. Hosea C. Brewster was cleaning house. "Milly!" he began, sternly. "And that's just the thing you came here to get away from. If Pinky--" "I didn't mean to, father. But when I got up this morning there was a letter--a letter from the woman who owns this apartment, you know. She asked if I'd go to the hall closet--the one she reserved for her own things, you know--and unlock it, and get out a box she told me about, and have the hall boy express it to her. And I did, and--look!" Limping a little he followed her. She turned on the light that hung in the closet. Boxes--pasteboard boxes--each one bearing a cryptic pencilling on the end that stared out at you. "Drp Stud Win," said one; "Sum Slp Cov Bedrm," another; "Toil. Set & Pic Frms." Mrs. Brewster turned to her husband, almost shamefacedly, and yet with a little air of defiance. "It--I don't know--it made me--not homesick, Hosey. Not homesick, exactly; but--well, I guess I'm not the only woman with a walnut streak in her modern make-up. Here's the woman--she came to the door with her hat on, and yet--" Truth--blinding, white-hot truth--burst in upon him. "Mother," he said--and he stood up, suddenly robust, virile, alert--"mother, let's go home." Mechanically she began to unpin the looped-back skirt. "When?" "Now." "But, Hosey! Pinky--this flat--until June--" "Now! Unless you want to stay. Unless you like it here in this--this make-believe, double-barrelled, duplex do-funny of a studio thing. Let's go home, mother. Let's go home--and breathe." In Wisconsin you are likely to find snow in April--snow or slush. The Brewsters found both. Yet on their way up from the station in 'Gene Buck's flivver taxi they beamed out at it as if it were a carpet of daisies. At the corner of Elm and Jackson streets Hosey Brewster stuck his head out of the window. "Stop here a minute, will you, 'Gene?" They stopped in front of Hengel's meat market, and Hosey went in. Mrs. Brewster leaned back without comment. Inside the shop. "Well, I see you're back from the East," said Aug Hengel. "Yep." "We thought you'd given us the go-by, you stayed away so long." "No, sir-ree! Say, Aug, give me that piece of bacon--the big piece. And send me up some corned beef to-morrow for corned beef and cabbage. I'll take a steak along for to-night. Oh, about four pounds. That's right." It seemed to him that nothing less than a side of beef could take out of his mouth the taste of those fiddling little lamb chops and the restaurant fare of the past six months. * * * * *