“My father’s family was starving in Wicklow. Pa was a boy and no use at home ploughing more fields for a grabbing landlord. So he came. He wasn’t happy coming. Mother I don’t remember very well, she came from a place near Pressberg in Bohemia. She was so lovely always ... tall and so sweet ... and always so tired. I guess they were all just tired--her whole family came--they couldn’t keep still. I’ve been tired that way. I’d keep moving and moving. I’d say to myself; Now Clara if you’ll just try and stop and _sit down_ you’ll be better. I couldnt. Something like that I’ve felt in all the foreigners ... Czechs and Dagos and Bohunks ... I have ever seen. Something in ’em I guess got too tired to hold on, to stay on, they had to move ... and there’s America all ready, a chute like in the cowpens I’ve seen over in Brooklyn ready to swallow ’em up as they come tumblin’. Heaven knows where those foreigners get their idea of us.” She was taller than Fanny, slimmer.--She cant be more than eighteen. Fanny’s heart went out, clamorous, sudden ... stopped against a strength and a maturity she felt. With her heart’s warmth she saw this girl. Saw sharp against the day’s languor the long face, clear dark, with narrowing thrust chin from the full mouth, cheeks high and delicate, brow faintly curving and sheer beneath the black hair. Saw in the soft fabric of her waist nervous elbows thrusting outward always as she walked, against air, against world. Saw the whole taut tender body in a world less clear, ever less fair than her dark freshness. Saw at last as they stopped: “Well I go here. See you to-morrow” ... eyes very black very large, dry and within themselves like windows of some hidden world having no faith in the sun. --I have lost what you have not yet begun to make. Yet my hand is softer than yours! Fanny knew it was a thing which must change: that her hand was softer. She walked the swirling Spring-drunk dusty streets with thoughts of this girl and her hand. * * * * *