"Dr. Ben, I wouldn't want to!" she had answered gaily. "You're older than Cliff; I know that. But you're broad, Dr. Ben, and you're simple, and you aren't narrow! You've grown older the way I want to, just smiling and listening. And you know more in your little finger than--than some people know in their whole bodies!" And she put her arms about his neck, and gave him a daughter's laughing kiss. "Looky here," said the old man, warming, "a man's got to be dead before he can stand for a thing like this! You haven't got a waiting-list, I suppose, Miss Martie?" "No, sir!" she answered positively. "But if ever I do I'll let you know!" She and Teddy ate their first meal at Childs'. Little signs bearing the single word "strawberries" were pasted on the window; Martie felt a real thrill of affection for the place as she went in. After a while "Old Southern Corn Cakes" would take the place of the strawberries, and then grape-fruit "In Season Now." "After a while we'll be too rich to come here, Ted!" she said as they went out. "Wull we?" Teddy asked regretfully. They went into the pushing and crowding of the streets; heard the shrill trill of the crossing policeman's whistle again; caught a glimpse of Broadway's lights, fanning lower and higher, and as the big signs rippled up and down. Martie drank it in eagerly, no faintest shadow of apprehension fell upon this evening. She and Teddy walked to their little hotel; to-morrow she would see her editor, and they would search for cheaper quarters. She would get the half-promised position or another; it mattered not which. She would board economically, or find diminutive quarters for housekeeping; be comfortable either way. If they kept house, some kindly old woman would be found to give Teddy bread and butter when he came in from school. And on hot summer Sundays she and Teddy would pack their lunch, and make an early start for the beach; theoretically, it would be an odd life for the child, but actually--how much richer and more sympathetic she would make it than her own had been! Children are natural gypsies, and Teddy would never complain because his mother kept him up later than was quite conventional in the evening, and sometimes took him to her office, to draw pictures or look at books for a quiet hour. And she would have friends: women who were working like herself, and men, too. She was as little afraid of the other as of the one now. There would be visits to country cottages; there would be winter dinners, down on the Square. And some day, perhaps, she would have the studio with the bare floors and the dark rugs. Over and over again she said the words to herself: she was free; she was free.