There was a game Lilly used to play on the front stairs of Mrs. Schum's boarding house, winter evenings after dinner. She and Lester Eli, who, at seventeen, was to drown in a pleasure canoe; Snow Horton--clandestinely present--daughter of a neighborhood dentist and forbidden to play with the "boarding-house children"; Flora and Roy Kemble, twins; and little Harry Calvert, who would creep up like a dirty little white mouse from the basement kitchen. "C"--hissed sibilantly. "Can't carry cranky cats!" "No fair, Snow; that doesn't make sense." "Does." "Your turn, Roy." "Z." "No fair. Nothing begins with 'Z.'" LILLY: "Does so. Z! Z--zounds--zippy--zingorella--zoe! Zoe!" By similar strain of alliterative classification, Mrs. Schum's boarding house might have been indexed as Middle West, middle class, medium price, and meager of meal. Poor, callous-footed Mrs. Schum, with her spotted bombazine bosom and her loosely anchored knob of gray hair! She was the color of cold dish water at that horrid moment when the grease begins to float, her hands were corroded with it, and her smile somehow could catch you by the heartstrings, which smiles have no right to do. How patiently and how drearily she padded through these early years of Lilly's existence. There were rubber insets in her shoes which sagged so that her ankles seemed actually to touch the floor from the climbing upstairs and downstairs on her missionary treadmill of the cracked slop jar; the fly in the milk; the too-tepid shaving water; the bathroom monopoly; the infant cacophony of midnight colic; salt on the sleety sidewalk, the pasted handkerchief against a front window pane; ice water. Towels. Towels. Towels. And how saucily after school would Lilly plant herself down in the subterranean depths of the kitchen. "Mrs. Schum, mamma says to give me a piece of bread and butter." With her worried eyes Mrs. Schum would smile and invariably hand out a thick slice, thinly buttered. "More butter, mamma said." "That's plenty, dearie; too much isn't good for little girls' complexions." "More but-ter!" "Here, then." Scalloping the air with it before little Harry's meek eyes: "You can't have any. You don't pay board. We do!" "My Mamma-Annie she paid board once. Uh-huh! my Mamma-Annie she's an angel in heaven and you aren't. Uh-huh!" This from little Harry, who was far too pale and wore furiously stained blouses. "But your mamma-Annie's dead now. You can't be a real live angel without being dead first, and I'd rather be me." "Lilly, aren't you ashamed? You run on now, or I'll tell your mamma. Poor little Harry can't help it he's an orphan with only his old gramaw to look after him. You a great big girl with your mother and father to do for you. It's not nice to be against Harry."