It was a lowering Chicago March morning, gray, foggy, sodden, with a wet blanket wind from the lake that was more chilling than a walk through water and more penetrating than severe cold. The months-old soot-grimed snow and ice lay everywhere. The front page predicted rain. Not a glint of sunlight filtered through the yellow pane of the stained-glass window in the Payson dining room. "Ugh!" thought Lottie picturing the downtown streets a morass of mud trampled to a pudding consistency. And yet she smiled. She was to have the morning alone; the morning from eight until almost noon. There was Gussie to interview. There was Judge Barton to confer with--dear Emma Barton. There was poor Jennie to dispose of. There was work to do. Real work. Lottie rose from the table and stood in the pantry doorway holding the swinging door open with one foot as she was getting into her coat. "I'll be back by noon, mother, surely. Perhaps earlier. Then we'll go right over to your buildings and collect the rents and market on the way back." "Oh," said Mrs. Payson only. Her mouth was pursed. "For that matter, I think it's so foolish to bother about Sunday dinner. We always get up later on Sunday, and eat more for breakfast. Let's just have lunch this once. Let's try it. Forget about the leg of lamb or the roast beef----" Mrs. Payson raised her eyebrows in the direction of the listening Hulda. "I'll leave that kind of thing to your sister Belle--this new idea of getting up at noon on Sunday and then having no proper Sunday dinner. We've always had Sunday dinners in this house and we always will have as long as I'm head of the household." "Well, I just thought----" Lottie released the swinging door. She came back into the dining room and glanced at herself in the sideboard mirror. Lottie was the kind of woman who looks well in the morning. A clear skin, a clear eye, hair that springs cleanly away from the temples. This morning she looked more than usually alert. A little half-smile of anticipation was on her lips. The lowering weather, her mother's dourness, Hulda's slightly burned toast--she had allowed none of these things to curdle the cream of her morning's adventure. She was wearing her suit and furs and the small velvet hat whose doom Belle had pronounced the evening before. As she drew on her gloves her mother entered the dining room. "I'll be back by noon, surely." Mrs. Payson did not answer. Lottie went down the long hall toward the front door. Her mother followed. "Going to Belle's?" "Yes. I'll have to hurry." At the door Mrs. Payson flung a final command. "You'd better go South Park to Grand." Lottie had meant to. It was the logical route to Belle's. She had taken it a thousand times. Yet now, urged by some imp of perversity, she was astonished to hear herself saying, "No, I'm going up Prairie to Fifty-first." The worst possible road.