“Oh, but I can’t leave you like this—you’re not fit to go home alone. And I can’t go with you either!” Nettie Struther wailed with a start of recollection. “You see, it’s my husband’s night-shift—he’s a motor-man—and the friend I leave the baby with has to step upstairs to get HER husband’s supper at seven. I didn’t tell you I had a baby, did I? She’ll be four months old day after tomorrow, and to look at her you wouldn’t think I’d ever had a sick day. I’d give anything to show you the baby, Miss Bart, and we live right down the street here—it’s only three blocks off.” She lifted her eyes tentatively to Lily’s face, and then added with a burst of courage: “Why won’t you get right into the cars and come home with me while I get baby’s supper? It’s real warm in our kitchen, and you can rest there, and I’ll take YOU home as soon as ever she drops off to sleep.” It WAS warm in the kitchen, which, when Nettie Struther’s match had made a flame leap from the gas-jet above the table, revealed itself to Lily as extraordinarily small and almost miraculously clean. A fire shone through the polished flanks of the iron stove, and near it stood a crib in which a baby was sitting upright, with incipient anxiety struggling for expression on a countenance still placid with sleep. Having passionately celebrated her reunion with her offspring, and excused herself in cryptic language for the lateness of her return, Nettie restored the baby to the crib and shyly invited Miss Bart to the rocking-chair near the stove. “We’ve got a parlour too,” she explained with pardonable pride; “but I guess it’s warmer in here, and I don’t want to leave you alone while I’m getting baby’s supper.” On receiving Lily’s assurance that she much preferred the friendly proximity of the kitchen fire, Mrs. Struther proceeded to prepare a bottle of infantile food, which she tenderly applied to the baby’s impatient lips; and while the ensuing degustation went on, she seated herself with a beaming countenance beside her visitor. “You’re sure you won’t let me warm up a drop of coffee for you, Miss Bart? There’s some of baby’s fresh milk left over—well, maybe you’d rather just sit quiet and rest a little while. It’s too lovely having you here. I’ve thought of it so often that I can’t believe it’s really come true. I’ve said to George again and again: ‘I just wish Miss Bart could see me NOW—’ and I used to watch for your name in the papers, and we’d talk over what you were doing, and read the descriptions of the dresses you wore. I haven’t seen your name for a long time, though, and I began to be afraid you were sick, and it worried me so that George said I’d get sick myself, fretting about it.” Her lips broke into a reminiscent smile. “Well, I can’t afford to be sick again, that’s a fact: the last spell nearly finished me. When you sent me off that time I never thought I’d come back alive, and I didn’t much care if I did. You see I didn’t know about George and the baby then.”