Mrs. Riley, still gazing, fascinated, at the group, backed out of the room and closed the door. Her steps were heard stumbling down the stairs. Madam Grant’s eyes quivered and opened slowly. She shuddered, then shook the blood back into her thin, white hands. Finally she looked up at Francis and smiled. "All right, dear!" Her smile, however, lasted but for the few moments during which he caressed her; then the veil fell upon her countenance, and her eyes grew strange and hard. She gazed wildly here and there about the room. "What’s that in Boston?" she asked suddenly, the pitch of her voice sharply raised, as she pointed to the shells upon the rubbish of the floor. "Only some peanuts I was eating, Mamsy," said the boy, guiltily watching her. "Somebody has been in Toledo, somebody has been in New York! I can see the smoke of the trains!" Her eyes traveled around an invisible path, from mound to mound of dirt and scraps, noticing the slight displacements the boy had made in his quest for food. He watched her sharply, but without fear. "Oh, the train didn’t stop, Mamsy; they were express trains, you know." "Don’t tell me, don’t tell me!" She pointed with her slender forefinger here and there. "New Orleans is safe; New Orleans is always a safe, strait-laced old town; but the place isn’t what it was! They’ve left the French quarter now to the Creoles, but I know a place on Royal Street where the gallery whispers—O God! that gallery with the magnolia trees—and the leper girl across the street in the end room!" Her voice had sunk to a harsh whisper; now it rose again. "Chicago—all right. I wouldn’t care if it weren’t. Baltimore—_he_ never was in Baltimore. But what’s the matter with Denver? Somebody’s been to Denver!" She turned her gaze point-blank upon Francis. He met it fairly. "Oh, no, Mamsy, nobody ever goes to Denver, Mamsy dear!" She knelt down and groped tentatively, sensitively, across the layer of dust that sloped toward the corner, by the bay-window. She turned, still on all-fours, to shake her finger at him, and say solemnly: "Don’t ever go to Denver, Francis! Denver’s a bad place, a very wicked place. They gamble in Denver, they gamble yellow money away." She arose, apparently either satisfied or diverted in her quest, to turn her back to the boy and look inside the bag she had been holding. "Go outside, Francis!" she commanded, after fumbling with its contents. He walked to the door and passed into the hall. Here he waited, listening listlessly, drumming softly upon the railing. The room was silent for a while; then he heard a muffled pounding, as of one stamping down the surface of the matted dirt. At last she called him and he went in again. Madam Grant’s face was placid and kind.