Another trouble was that Fanny was beginning to show fresh traces of her sense of the “fun of the thing.” Her spine was stiffening a little with good food and rest, and curious little suggestions of starch showed in lips and hair and breast that had been utterly draggled. She was often seen hanging over the banisters; sure indication of renewal of life and hope. She didn’t weep over the departed Albert; in fact, Pidge Musser observed, as an added revelation of the hatefulness of life, that Fanny was back on the scene looking for a man--not earnestly, not passionately, but without compunction and entirely unwhipped. Fanny granted that she was nobody, that she never had been; but that was no sign why she should pass up anything that was going by. Pain and hunger were forgotten like a sickness. One night as she was coming in, Pidge heard Fanny’s low laugh on the floor above, as she ran upstairs in time to shoo a lodger from Fanny’s arms in the doorway. Then she followed into the littered room and a light was made. The two women faced. The laugh remained unwithered on Fanny’s cheerful face. “Oh, Musser, you look so cross,” she panted. “Don’t you remember--?” Pidge began. “Remember wot?” “What you were in that beast’s nest in Foley Street?” “That’s what you always want, Musser, always want me to keep rememberin’, just as I’m getting straightened out.” The fashion of Fanny’s straightening out settled upon Pidge, as she looked around the room. Its awfulness was beyond tears to her, even beyond laughter. “Fanny Gallup, if you bring another baby here, I’ll--I’ll----” “There ain’t going to be no other baby here, Musser. I ain’t nobody’s chicken like that.” XX THEY WALK IN CIRCLES ONE day just as Pidge was finishing luncheon with John Higgins, she was startled to hear Melton’s voice. He moved around their table with a fling of his coat tails and held out both his hands. It actually sounded, though she never was sure, as if he said something like, “I’ve been looking everywhere for you.” Pidge fancied a sort of rueful wonder on the old editor’s face, as he announced his haste to get back to the office, and bolted out.... She was recalling the baby carriage in Santa Monica. Melton’s face was slightly broader, she thought, and the poise of young success was upon it. One thing she had never known before was how remarkably well his curly head was placed upon its shoulders. The neck was not merely a nexus, but a thing of worth in itself, with arch and movement which made him look taller and intimated something light and fleet, touching memories which Pidge could not quite grip. They were together in the street. Melton had asked her to walk with him to his bank. He seemed on both sides of her at once, his hand drawing her deftly this way and that through the crowd, his chat and laughter in her ears, and an old indescribable weariness and helplessness in herself.