The four children who had died were quite as much in their mother's thoughts and conversation, and probably more in her prayers, than the living ones. Of "Curley," too, Martie heard much. She was able to picture a cheerful, noisy home, full of shouting, dark, untidy-headed children, with an untidy-headed servant, a scatter-brained mother, and an unexacting father in charge. "Curley" usually went to sleep on the sofa after dinner, and Mrs. Curley's sister, Mrs. Royce, with her children, or her sister-in-law, "Mrs. Dan," with hers, came over to pick up the Curleys on the way to a Mission sermon, a church concert, or a meeting of the Women's Auxiliary of the Saint Vincent de Paul. "... Or else maybe the priest would step in," said Mrs. Curley, remembering these stirring days, "or often I'd take Mollie or Katie--God rest her!--and go over to see the Sisters. But many a night there'd be sickness in the house--Curley had two cousins and an aunt that died on us--and then I'd be there sitting up with the medicines, and talking with this one and that. I was never one to run away from sickness, nor death either for that matter. I'm a great hand with death in the house; there's no sole to my foot when I'm needed! I'll never forget the day that I went over to poor Aggie Lemmon's house--she was a lovely woman who lived round the corner from me. Well, I hadn't been thinking she looked very well for several weeks, do you see?--and I passed the remark to my brother Thomas's wife--God rest her----" A reminiscence would follow. Martie never tired of them. Whether she was held, just now, in the peaceful, unquestioning mood that precedes a serious strain on mind and body, or whether her old hostess really had had an unusually interesting experience, she did not then or ever decide. She only knew that she liked to sit playing solitaire in the hot evenings, under a restricted cone of light, with Mrs. Curley sitting in the darkness by the window, watching the lively street, fanning herself comfortably, and pouring forth the history of the time Curley gave poor Ralph a "crule" beating, or of the day Alicia Curley died in convulsions at the age of three. Martie had hoped to be in her own little home when the baby came, but this was swiftly proven impossible. Wallace's play failed after the wonderful salary had been paid for only eight weeks. He idled about with his wife for a few happy weeks, and then got another engagement with a small comic opera troupe, and philosophically and confidently went on the road. Presently he was home again and in funds, but this time it was only a few days before the next parting.