"Grab him, will you?" she gasped; and when Mr. Weston had grabbed, and the terrier was sprawling abjectly under the discipline of a friendly cuff on his nose, she got her breath, and said, panting, "Where do you spring from?" It was Frederica Payton, her short serge skirt splashed with mud, and a lock of hair blown across her eyes. "He's a wretch, that pup!" she said. "I'll give him to you for a present." "I wouldn't deprive you of him for the world!" he protested, in alarm. "Here, let me have the leash." She relinquished it, and they walked back together toward Payton Street, Zip shambling meekly at their heels. "Well," she said, thrusting a confiding arm in his, "were you able to move her? Or did she turn Aunt Bessie loose on you, too? I knew Aunt Bessie was to be asked to the funeral. I suppose she talked anti-suffrage, and quoted 'my William' every minute? Aunt Bessie hasn't had an idea of her own since the year one! Isn't it queer what stodgy minds middle-aged women have? I suppose you are about dead?" "I have felt more lively. Fred, why can't you see your mother's side of it?" "Why can't she see my side of it?" "But she thinks--" "But _I_ think! What I object to in Mother is that she wants me to think her thoughts. Apart from the question of hypocrisy, I prefer my own." As she spoke, the light of a street lamp fell full on her face--a wolfish, unhumorous young face, pathetic with its hunger for life; he saw that her chin was twitching, and there was a wet gleam on one flushed cheek. "Besides," she said, "I simply won't go on spending my days as well as my nights in that house. You don't know what it means to live in the same house with--with--" "I wish you were married," he said, helplessly; "that's the best way to get out of that house." She laughed, and squeezed his arm. "You want to get off your job?" she said, maliciously; "well, you can't. I'm the Old Man of the Sea, and you'll have to carry me on your back for the rest of your life. No marriage in mine, thank you!" They were sauntering along now in the darkness, her arm still in his, and her cheek, in her eagerness, almost touching his shoulder; her voice was flippantly bitter: "I don't want a man; I want an occupation!" "But it isn't necessary, Fred. And besides, there are home duties." "In our house? Name 'em! Shall I make the soap, or wait on the table and put Flora out of a job? Where people have any money at all, 'home duties,' so far as girls are concerned, are played out. Machinery is the cuckoo that has pushed women out of the nest of domesticity. I made that up," she added, with frank vanity. "I haven't a blessed thing to do in my good home--I suppose you heard that I had a 'good home'? which means a roof, and food, so far as I can make out. But as there is something besides eating and sleeping in this life, I am going to get busy outside of my 'good home'!"