FANNY GALLUP was taking life easy. She had not been separated from her children, but relieved for the present from the hunger drive to support them. Pidge helped to pay Fanny’s room and board, but didn’t miss the fact that the main expense fell upon Miss Claes. “There is a little fund back of me for just such cases, Pidge,” Miss Claes said. “I rarely divulge the fact, but there is no reason in the world why you should be inconvenienced.” “Except that I brought her here----” “I asked you to.” “Except that she called on _me_ in her trouble, and I worked elbow to elbow with her for four months, and she pulls out the very devil from me every time I see her.” “Your feeling of responsibility is what makes you what you are--I never miss that, Pidge. If you weren’t so hard and straight on all the tricky little matters of dollars and cents, you can be very sure I’d never tell you my secret of secrets, about the fund.” “I’ll have to pay what I can, if only because I hate to so. But I can never pay for bringing her to your house.” Miss Claes laughed. “That is only the way you see it. Fanny isn’t heavy on us here. Not at all. It’s the dear, possessive Pidge that is hurt. Do you suppose I am torn by what goes on in the rooms and halls? Not torn beyond repair from day to day, at least. Fanny’s only a little more simple than most, a little less secretive.” “She’s unmoral,” Pidge declared solemnly. “The awful thing is, she doesn’t learn. Life passes through her like a sieve, leaves its muck on her, and she doesn’t learn.” Philosophy seldom helped Pidge; she had heard too much of it, and money was invariably a serious affair. In the California life there had never been enough money for all needs. Adolph Musser was unable to do without what he wanted, even though the immediate tradespeople of the neighborhood were frequently forced to. The metaphysician relied upon the Law of Providence to take care of them; and this had hacked and hewed into Pidge’s disposition; this had meant red war to her soul up to the last hour in her father’s house. Here in New York the fight had been different. Even with Miss Claes mysteriously back of her from the beginning, she had faced, in her first few months in New York, the ugly candor of starvation. There was established in Pidge both from Los Angeles and New York experiences, a determination to fix herself unrockingly on her own feet in a financial way; and now, just as she might have gotten a bit ahead, was the expense of Albert’s children, and the claims of their mother, which were getting to look as interminable to Pidge as a ninety-nine years’ lease.