He got off the train in much the desolate mood that had dejected Momma when she arrived. He also resisted the redcap and trudged dolefully to the line where people waited behind the rope. And up to him also came a gorgeous creature whom he did not recognize until he heard the ancient voice. “Poppa, don’t you know me?” The voice was Momma’s, but since when was she a tsarina off the throne? He, too, dropped his handbag and collapsed. And she lifted him and murmured as she kissed him: “Don’t you like me?” “I don’t know you,” he faltered. But he kissed her suave and fragrant cheek again and looked into the gleaming eyes of the bride he remembered out of the long ago. Then he began to laugh in great gulps of blissful anguish, like a boy who has found on the Christmas tree a richer gift than he had ever dreamed of, or dared to ask. Momma cried too. But such a different wail from the wails he had heard from her of late! Finally Poppa thought that he must give credit for the redemption where it was due. “That Dr. Courtneidge is certainly a wonder. What on earth did he do to you?” “I haven’t seen him yet,” said Momma. “And I’m not goin’ to. I’ve taken what Ella calls the ‘hat cure’ and all the other clothes cures. And they haven’t cost much more than old Courtneidge would have charged.” Poppa felt very uneasy walking along with Momma in all her glittering glory. He had always loved her. Now he felt proud of her with the goodly pride of a man who has the luck to get a beautiful wife and the brains to keep her beautiful. The only fly in the great bowl of ointment was himself, his shabby self. He confessed as much. “I’m ashamed to be seen with you, Momma.” “You won’t be after I get through taking you to the tailor’s and the other places I’m goin’ to take you to. This is our second honeymoon, Poppa. We didn’t have any trousseau at tall before, but we’re going to make up for it now. I think I’ll telegraph for Hattie and give her a look, just so’s to hear her say: ‘Why, Momma, you ought to be ashamed of yourself!’” “I guess you’d oughta, at that,” Poppa guffawed. And as she swept into Ella’s limousine like a Roman empress entering a chariot. Momma tittered: “I am! I’m so ashamed of myself, I’m proud of it!” _Cosmopolitan Magazine_ BACK PAY BY FANNIE HURST BACK PAY[5] By FANNIE HURST I set out to write a love-story, and for the purpose sharpened a bright-pink pencil with a glass ruby frivolously at the eraser end.