As she hung between despair and anxiety the telephone-bell rang. Jim Dyckman called her up to say that he was delayed for half an hour. Kedzie came back and invited her parents in. It made her sick to see their awkwardness among the furniture. They went like scows adrift. They priced everything with their eyes, and the beauty was spoiled by the estimated cost. Mrs. Thropp asked Kedzie how she was half a dozen times, and, before Kedzie could answer, went on to tell about her own pains. Mr. Thropp was freshly alive to the fact that New York's population is divided into two classes--innocent visitors and resident pirates. While they asked Kedzie questions that she did not care to answer, and answered questions she had not cared to ask, Kedzie kept wondering how she could get rid of them before Dyckman came. She thanked Heaven that there was no guest-room in her apartment. They could not live with her, at least. Suddenly it came over the pretty, bewildered little thing with her previous riddle of how to get rid of a last-year's husband so that she might get a new model--suddenly it came over Kedzie that she had a tremendous necessity for help, advice, parentage. The crying need for a father and a mother enhanced the importance of the two she had on hand. She broke right into her mother's description of a harrowing lumbago she had suffered from: it was that bad she couldn't neither lay nor set--that is to say, comfortable. Kedzie's own new-fangled pronunciations and phrases fell from her mind, and she spoke in purest Nimrim: “Listen, momma and poppa. I'm in a peck of trouble, and maybe you can help me out.” “Is it money?” Adna wailed, sepulchrally. “No, unless it's too much of the darned stuff.” Adna gasped at the paradox. He had no time to comment before she assailed him with: “You see, I've gone and got married.” This shattered them both so that the rest was only shrapnel after shell. But it was a leveling bombardment of everything near, dear, respectable, sacred. They were fairly rocked by each detonation of fact. “Yes, I went and married a dirty little rat--name's Gilfoyle--he thinks my real name's Anita Adair. I got it out of a movie, first day I ran off from you folks. I had an awful time, momma--like to starved--would have, only for clerkin' in a candy-store. Then I got work posln' for commercial photographers. Did you see the Breathasweeta Chewin' Gum Girl? No? That was me. Then I was a dancer for a while--on the stage--and--the other girls were awful cats. But what d'you expect? The life was terrible. We didn't wear much clo'es. That didn't affect me, though; some of those nood models are terribly respectable--not that I was nood, o' course. But--well--so I married Tommie Gilfoyle. I don't know how I ever came to. He must have mesmerized me, I guess.” “What did he work at?” said Adna. “Poetry.” “Is poetry work?”