Stewards from the best Chicago hotels of that day—the Sherman House, the Auditorium, the Palmer House, the Wellington, the Stratford—came to Will Talcott for their daily supplies. The grocers who catered to the well-to-do north-side families and those in the neighbourhood of fashionable Prairie Avenue on the south bought of him. Now, in his doorway, he eyed the spare little figure that appeared before him all in rusty black, with its strained anxious face, its great deep-sunk eyes. “DeJong, eh? Sorry to hear about your loss, ma’am. Pervus was a fine lad. No great shakes at truck farming, though. His widow, h’m? Hm.” Here, he saw, was no dull-witted farm woman; no stolid Dutch woman truckster. He went out to her wagon, tweaked the boy’s brown cheek. “Wa-al now, Mis’ DeJong, you got a right smart lot of garden stuff here and it looks pretty good. Yessir, pretty good. But you’re too late. Ten, pret’ near.” “Oh, no!” cried Selina. “Oh, no! Not too late!” And at the agony in her voice he looked at her sharply. “Tell you what, mebbe I can move half of ’em along for you. But stuff don’t keep this weather. Turns wilty and my trade won’t touch it . . . First trip in?” She wiped her face that was damp and yet cold to the touch. “First—trip in.” Suddenly she was finding it absurdly hard to breathe. He called from the sidewalk to the men within: “George! Ben! Hustle this stuff in. Half of it. The best. Send you check to-morrow, Mis’ DeJong. Picked a bad day, didn’t you, for your first day?” “Hot, you mean?” “Wa-al, hot, yes. But I mean a holiday like this pedlers mostly ain’t buying.” “Holiday?” “You knew it was a Jew holiday, didn’t you? Didn’t!—Wa-al, my sakes! Worst day in the year. Jew pedlers all at church to-day and all the others not pedlers bought in Saturday for two days. Chicken men down the street got empty coops and will have till to-morrow. Yessir. Biggest chicken eaters, Jews are, in the world . . . Hm . . . Better just drive along home and just dump the rest that stuff, my good woman.” One hand on the seat she prepared to climb up again—did step to the hub. You saw her shabby, absurd side-boots that were so much too big for the slim little feet. “If you’re just buying my stuff because you’re sorry for me——” The Peake pride. “Don’t do business that way. Can’t afford to, ma’am. My da’ter she’s studying to be a singer. In Italy now, Car’line is, and costs like all get-out. Takes all the money I can scrape together, just about.” There was a little colour in Selina’s face now. “Italy! Oh, Mr. Talcott!” You’d have thought she had seen it, from her face. She began to thank him, gravely. “Now, that’s all right, Mis’ DeJong. I notice your stuff’s bunched kind of extry, and all of a size. Fixin’ to do that way right along?” “Yes. I thought—they looked prettier that way—of course vegetables aren’t supposed to look pretty, I expect——” she stammered, stopped.