Jeannette was speaking again. "The houses around here are swell, ain't they?" "Yes," Lottie agreed, absently. Her own house was a block away. Jeannette's mind grasshoppered to another topic. "I can talk good if you keep telling me. I forget. Home and in the works everybody talks bum English. I learn quick." "Well, then," said Lottie. "I shouldn't say 'swell' nor 'ain't'." Jeannette thought a moment. "The--houses--around--here--are--grand--are--they--not?" Suddenly Lottie reached over and covered the girl's hand with her own. Jeannette smiled back at her. She thought her a fine looking middle-aged person. Not a very swell dresser but you could see she had class. "Here we are!" said Lottie aloud. The direct, clear-headed woman who had acted with authority and initiative only an hour before in the court room was now thinking, "Oh, dear! Oh, _dear_!" in anticipative agony. She stepped out of the electric. "Gussie'll be glad." "Yeh--Gussie!" Jeannette's tone was not without venom. "She's her own boss. She's got it good. Sometimes for a whole month she didn't come home." She stared curiously at the grim old Prairie Avenue house. It was raining hard now. Lottie glanced quickly up at the parlour window. Sometimes her mother stood there, watching for her, impatient of any waiting. She was not there now. She opened the front door, the two entered--Jeannette the braver of the two. "Yoo-hoo!" called Lottie with an airy assumption of cheeriness. Jeannette stood looking up and down the long dim hallway with wide ambient eyes. There was no answer to Lottie's call. She sped back to the kitchen. "Where's mother?" "She ban gone out." "Out! Where? It's raining. Pouring!" "She ban gone out." Even in her horror at the thought of her rheumatism-stricken mother in the downpour she was conscious of a feeling of relief. It was the relief a condemned murderer feels whose hanging is postponed from to-day until to-morrow. She came back to Jeannette. Oh, _dear_! "Come upstairs with me, Jeannette." Lottie ran up the stairs quickly, Jeannette at her heels. She went straight to Aunt Charlotte's room. Aunt Charlotte was asleep in her old plush armchair by the window. She often napped like that in the morning. She dropped off to sleep easily, sometimes dozing almost immediately after breakfast. It was light, fitful sleep. She started up, wide awake, as Lottie came in. "Where's mother?" Aunt Charlotte smiled grimly. "She bounced out the minute you left." "But where?" "Her rents and the marketing." "But it's raining. She can't be out in the rain. Way over there!" "She said she was going to take the street car.... What time is it, Lottie? I must have.... Who's that in the hall?" She stopped in the middle of a yawn. "Jeannette, come here. This is Jeannette, Aunt Charlotte. Gussie's sister. You know--Gussie who works for Belle. I've brought Jeannette home with me." "That's nice," said Aunt Charlotte, pleasantly. "To live, I mean."