"Never. No crusts and water for me--coffee and flapjacks every time." Once more she bent toward him. "You are an ascetic. To live in this place, and wear--What are you wearing? Old clothes and a--What on earth is that scarf pin? A ten-cent piece?" He put up his hand. "Benson, the little old watchmaker on the corner, gave me that. No, it's not a dime. It pleases him immensely to see me wear it. It's not bad, Sue. Nonsense!" "It's not good--cheap!" He sat smiling up at her, while she regarded him in silence for a minute. Then she broke out again: "Why--_why_ do you do it? Haven't you worked hard enough in your great parish, without allowing yourself to spoil this rest you so much need?" "Sue," said her brother, "the best cure for certain kinds of overwork is merely more work, only of a different sort. I can't be idle and contented. Can you?" "Idle! I should like to be idle. I'm rushed to death, all the time. It's killing me." "Dressmakers and hairdressers--and dinners and bridge and the whole routine of your set," said he. "It is indeed a hard life--I wonder you stand it." "Don't be ironic!" "I'm not ironic. I realized, long ago, that it's the hardest life in the world--and pays the least." She flushed. "I have my charities," she reminded him. "I'm not utterly useless. And my clubs--belonging to them is a duty I owe other women. I try to fulfill it." "But you're not happy." "Happy! I've forgotten the meaning of the word. To tell the honest truth, Don, I've been feeling for a long while that I didn't care--how soon it ended." "Poor little sister!" A crashing blow upon the door startled Mrs. Breckenridge so that she cried out under her breath. Brown went to the door. A furious gust of wind hurled it wide open beneath his hand, but there was no one upon the doorstep. No one? At his feet lay a bundle, from which sounded a wailing cry. He picked it up, looked up and down a vacant street, closed the door, and came back to Sue Breckenridge by the fire. "I wonder if they chose the bachelor's doorstep by chance or by intention," he said. V BROWN'S UNBORROWED BABY "Don! Don't take it in! They'll come back for it if you don't--they're watching somewhere. Put it back on the doorstone--don't look at it!" "Why, Sue!" he answered, and for an instant his eyes flashed reproof into hers. "On such a night?" "But what can you do with it?" "Make it comfortable, first." He was unwrapping the bundle. The child was swathed none too heavily in clean cotton comforters; it was crying frantically, and its hands, as Brown's encountered them in the unwinding, were cold and blue. There emerged from the wrappings an infant of possibly six weeks' existence in a world which had used it ill. "Will you take him while I get some milk?" asked Brown, as naturally as if handing crying babies over to his sister were an everyday affair with them both. She shook her head, backing away. "Oh, mercy, no! I shouldn't know what to do with it."