"Silly! the reason I stay where I am is very simple; I have no other place to go. Mamma is the only friend I have in America barring yourself. I am not at all prudish, but I couldn't very well--well, could I? "They are playing _D'Apres Midi d'un Faun_ now. "Your rejected friend, "Amy." CHAPTER X AMY'S STORY Greg's immediate impulse was to confide in Bessie Bickle. That good soul looked interested but dubious. "Will she have her boy's pants on?" she demanded. "No," said Greg smiling. "That's all right, then. Mind, I'm not saying I blame her; if she can get away with it, all right. But I wouldn't have the face myself to talk to a girl with boy's pants on; I wouldn't know where to look. You can have my parlor to sit in." "You must come in too," said Greg. "I want you to know her. She needs a woman friend." "But you said she was a high-toned lady. What would she want with the likes of me?" "Well, I don't know, if it comes to that, you're pretty high-toned yourself." "Go along with you!" Bessie's parlor was the front room over the grocery store. The room was the secret pride of her heart, though, poor soul, she had little enough occasion to use it. So carefully was it kept that it looked as spick and span as when it had first been created, perhaps twenty-five years before. There was a Brussels carpet on the floor with a design of bunches of red roses on a green ground, and there was a green plush "parlor suit." In the center of the room stood a marble-topped table with wonderfully curly legs, and upon it there was a plush album, and two piles of "gift-books" placed criss-cross. On the mantel-piece was an imitation onyx clock flanked by a superb pair of near-bronze Vikings with battle-axes which you could take out of their hands if you wished. Over the mantel hung a crayon portrait of Bessie's second husband, the late Mr. Bickle, fresh from the barber's. He occupied the place of honor presumably because he was the more recent. He was faced from across the room by Mr. Daniel Creavy, his predecessor. Mr. Creavy was cross-eyed and the crayon artist, evidently a grim realist, had disdained to modify his squint by a jot. There were several other pictures colored and representing sentimental situations entitled: "Parted," "The Tiff," and "The Green-eyed Monster."