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She drew a stool from under the dressing-table, sat down and plied him with hurried questions about the folks at home. He gave her the latest news, little intimate bits that mean nothing but are so dear to one who knows no fireside but the battered washstand and cracked basin of a third-rate hotel room.

Grand’pa Terwilliger, seventy-nine, was keeping company with the widow Bonser but was scared to marry her for fear folks would talk. Grace Perkins had a new baby. Stanley Perkins had married a stenographer in Boston and bought a flivver. He, Lou, had bought a victrola for fifteen dollars second-hand and had some crackerjack opera records for it. She ought to hear them!

When finally she sent him round to the front of the house and hurried down the ugly iron steps, her low-heeled white slippers touched them with an eager lightness they had not known for months.

The curtain was rung down on a one-act sketch. A placard announced “Miss Betty Parsons—in her Famous Imitations.”

With a dazzling smile, Elizabeth sallied forth, cane in hand singing, “I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy.”