"Nothing. Only, Wallie, if you have dinner with Mr. Richards and all those men, you know--you know you may not feel like--like getting up early to-morrow!" Martie, hesitating in the doorway with the baby, wavered between tact and truth. "Why don't you say I'll be drunk, while you're about it?" The ugly tone would rouse everything that was ugly in response. "Very well, I WILL say that, if you insist!" The slamming door ended the conversation; Martie trembled as she put the child to bed. Presently Isabeau would come to her to say noncommittally, but with watchful, white-rimmed eyes, that Mist' Bans'ter he didn' want no breakfuss, he jus' take hisse'f off. For the rest of the day, Martie carried a heart of lead. Mentally, morally, physically, the little family steadily descended. With Martie too ill to do more than drag herself through the autumn days, Wallace idle and ugly, Isabeau overworked and discontented, and bills accumulating on every side, there was no saving element left. Desperately the wife and mother plodded on; the children must have milk and bread, the rent-collector must be pacified if not satisfied. Everything else was unimportant. Her own appearance mattered nothing, the appearance of the house mattered nothing. She pinned the children's clothing when their buttons disappeared; she slipped a coat wearily over her house-dress, and went to the delicatessen store five minutes before dinner-time. She was thin enough now,--Martie, who had always longed to be thin. Sometimes, sitting on the side of an unmade bed, with a worn little shirt of Ted's held languidly in her hands, she would call the maid. "Isabeau! Hasn't Teddy a clean shirt?" "No, MA'AM! You put two them shirts in yo' basket 'n' says how you's going to fix 'em!" "I must get at those shirts," Martie would muse helplessly. "Come, Ted, look what you're doing! Pay attention, dear!" "Man come with yo meat bill, Mis' Ban'ster," Isabeau might add, lingering in the doorway. "Ah says you's OUT." "Thank you, Isabeau." Perhaps Martie would laugh forlornly. "Never mind--things must change! We can't go on THIS way!" Suddenly, she was ill. Without warning, without the slip or stumble or running upstairs that she was quite instinctively avoiding, the accident befell. Martie, sobered, took to her bed, and sent Isabeau flying for Dr. Converse, the old physician whose pleasant wife had often spoken to Teddy in the market. Strange--strange, that she who so loved children should be reduced now to mere thankfulness that the little life was not to be, mere gratitude for an opportunity to lie quiet in bed! "For I suppose I should stay in bed for a few days?" Martie asked the doctor. Until she was told she might get up. Very well, but he must remember that she had a husband and two children to care for, and make that soon.