"Coffee, eh?" said the man. "That's what I want most of all. My throat's all dried up with the dust. Guess I'd better begin on that now." He opened the dinner-pail and took a long drink out of it. "That's pretty good, that coffee. That went right to the spot!" "I made it," the child explained, proudly. "Did you now?" he answered. "Well, it's as good as your mother's." Then a bell rang down below; he pulled on one of the chains and the elevator began to go down slowly. "So-long, kid," he called, as his head sank to the level of the sidewalk. "Good-by, dad," she answered, leaning forward; "come home as early as you can. Mother'll be so glad to see you." The child waited until the covers had again closed over her father, and then she started away. Minnie Henryson turned and watched her as she slipped across the avenue, avoiding the cars and the carts with the skill born of long experience. At last Mrs. Henryson tore herself away from the window with its flamboyant head-gear. "No," she said, emphatically, "I don't believe really they're going to be any smaller." The daughter did not answer. She was thinking of the little domestic episode she had just witnessed; and her sympathy went out to the sick woman, laid up in some dark tenement and waiting through the long hours for her husband's return. Her case was sad; and yet she had a husband and a child and a home of her own; her life was fuller than the empty existence of a girl who had nothing to do but to go shopping with her mother and to gad about to teas, with now and then a dinner or a dance or the theater. A home of her own and a husband!--what was a woman's life without them? And so it was that what Minnie had just seen tied itself at once into the subject of her thoughts as she walked silently down the avenue by the side of her mother. The trains rattled and ground on the Elevated almost over their heads; the clouds scattered and a faint gleam of pale March sunshine at last illumined the grayness of the day. The noon-hour rush was at its height, and the sidewalks were often so thronged that mother and daughter were separated for a moment as they tried to pick their way through the crowd. When they came to the huge department-store they were seeking, Mrs. Henryson stood inside the vestibule as though deciding on her plan of campaign. "Minnie," she promulgated at last, "you had better try and match those ribbons, and I'll go and pick out the rug for your father." "Shall I wait for you at the ribbon-counter?" the daughter asked. "Just sit down, and I'll come back as soon as I can. You look a little tired this morning, anyhow." "I'm not the least tired, I assure you--but I didn't sleep well last night," she answered, as she went with her mother to the nearest elevator.