_Overjoyed dearest Mattie to learn that you will visit New York though greatly distressed to learn of your indisposition you must come to us of course just let me know the train and I will meet you whatever the hour. I know Dr. Courtneidge very well and he is an old darling. Love to you and your husband from us both._ ELLA. The gracious warmth of this brought tears to the eyes of the poor derelict, but she masked her sniffle in a sniff. “Where’d she learn all those swell words?” Hattie told her mother, as usual, that she ought to be ashamed of herself, and Momma was. She prolonged her resistance to the point where Poppa grew desperate enough to groan. “Well, you do as you’re a mind to. Seein’ you’re strong enough to fight forever, you go home and run the business and I’ll go to the hospital my own self.” “Run the business! That’s all you think of!” she retorted with a sublime non sequitur. “Put me on the cattle train and ship me off to the slaughter house. Ella still loves me, anyway, even if nobody else does, and she’ll see to it I get decently buried, and that’s all I got a right to expect.” Poppa dashed out and bathed his hot head in cold water before he went to the ticket office. He nearly bit the head off the agent, just to show that he had some manhood left. He was never quite the same man again after he got Momma on the train at last. He bade her a despondent farewell, feeling sure that he would never see her again. And, in a sense, he never did.... * * * * * Going to the city for the first time in her life, especially at such a time in her life, was an adventure and a half for Momma. In spite of the fact that she was advancing toward the knives of a surgeon who was her forlorn hope, she could not but feel a certain elation. She was experiencing what Victor Hugo called a “new shudder.” She was almost more afraid of Ella Killip and her splendor than of the pancreatic specialist. She was fairly smothered with dread of facing the woman she had not seen since Ella was a gangling, noisy, small-town tomboy, all freckles and giggles and gawkiness. She foresaw Ella as a sort of vast and glittering Queen Victoria, fattened on rich food and studded with jewels. She saw herself as a shabby farm wife whom Ella would probably give one glance and flee from with disdain. When she reached New York at last, her first struggle was with a red-capped ruffian who tried to steal her valise. Her next struggle was with her terror of the meeting with Ella. If she had known how to get a train back to Carthage, she would have taken it. But the crowd hustled her up the platform and she lugged a soul heavier than her rusty hand bag. No one had met her at the train, and she was morbid enough to hope that Ella had missed her. But inside the station she found a crowd held back by a rope, and paused to stare at the staring eyes.