"I've done considerable plodding in my time, I wouldn't mind a little skimming for a change," thought Persis. Next to a family she had long craved an automobile. The surplus of her income was sufficient for the purchase of one of the cheaper grades of cars. Persis decided on a visit to the city, with a view to making this investment. "I'm a little seedy with being shut in so much this winter, and a trip will do me good whether I buy an automobile or not. Mary's mother will come and stay with her and help out with the children. And if Joel wants to go along, he can." But apparently the protective impulse which had moved Joel to offer his company on the occasion of her previous visit had waned during the winter. He declined the invitation without thanks. It was proof enough of Persis' temperamental youthfulness that she reached the city with as keen a sense of adventure as if she had been a runaway boy following a circus. She went to the modest hotel she had patronized the previous fall and was surprised and flattered when the clerk called her by name. "Gives a body a home-coming feeling, that does," remarked Persis, as she wrote the cramped signature which so poorly represented her robust personality. "I don't see how you can remember everybody, with folks coming and going all the time." "There are some people it's easy to remember," replied the clerk gallantly and at the same time with sincerity. Whatever else time erased from the tablets of his memory, he would never forget Persis, and her acquisition of a family. Then he looked at her interrogatively, for Persis had jumped, blotting the register. "You'll have to excuse me." Persis reached for the blotter. "I saw a name I know and it sort of took my breath." There were but two signatures on the page besides her own, the names of Mrs. Honoria Walsh and Enid Randolph, both of Warren, New York. "I'll give you room forty-two," said the clerk, taking a key from the hook and nodding to a watchful lad in uniform. "Mrs. Walsh and her niece Miss Randolph are on the same floor. If they are friends of yours--" "No, I wouldn't say that," Persis interrupted. "It's just that I've heard of 'em before." As she left the elevator on the second floor, two women glided past her, one the portly widow with abundant crepe who is not easily differentiated, the other a stately girl with blonde hair and a scornfully tilted chin. Instinct told Persis that the latter was Enid.