"Mr. Flathers," she said, looking at him with what she conceived to be a searching glance, "do you ever drink?"

Assuring himself that Chick had gotten the can quite out of sight, Phineas looked at her reproachfully:

"Me? Why, Mrs. Ivy, I thought everybody knowed that since I joined the Church--of course I ain't denying that there _was_ a time when I knowed the taste of liquor. There ain't no good denying that, and, besides confession is good fer me, it humbles my spirit, Mrs. Ivy, it keeps me from being a publican."

"And tobacco?" queried Mrs. Ivy. "Liquor and tobacco go hand in hand, they are twin evils. Are you addicted to the use of tobacco?"

"Not me!" said Phineas, truthfully for once. "I ain't soiled my lips with a seegar for over twenty years, and you couldn't git me to chew if you chloroformed me. Ef liquor is the drink, terbaccer is the food of the devil, as I see it." Mrs. Ivy beamed upon him, as she opened the silver bag at her belt. "I shall report your case at our next meeting," she said with enthusiasm. "I shall quote your very words. And now I am going to pin this little badge on you, this little white badge that tells the world you belong to the Anti-Tobacco League. You have the honor of wearing what few of our greatest statesmen can wear! You have proven that a humble laborer can lead the way to Reform."

Miss Lady appeared at this point with the Boarder, who like most individuals of his class, complained continuously of the quantity and quality of his food.

"You find us in a bad way, Mis' Squeerington," Phineas said, offering her a bottomless chair with the air of a Christian martyr. "If my sister Myrtella knowed the half of what we was passin' through she wouldn't continue to steel her heart against us."

"Myrtella's heart's all right," said Miss Lady cheerfully; "she takes care of Chick, doesn't she?"

"She does, mam, in a way. But there's heavy expenses on a pore man with a family. Mrs. Flathers now ain't been able to have a see-ance since before the baby come. She did give one trance settin' yesterday, but she says she don't know what's got into her, she feels so sort of weak like!"

"How long has she been taking care of this other baby?" Miss Lady asked.

"Most ever since ours come. The Juvenile Court was looking round fer some one to nurse him till his maw got out of the jail hospital. I sez to Maria, 'Here's a chanct to do a good Christian act an' earn a honest penny. We'll take it in an' treat it like our own, sez I, an' the Lord will not fergit us, sez I!"

The Boarder, taking advantage of this assurance of hospitality, set up such a peremptory demand for food, that Miss Lady was compelled to walk the floor with him.

"Where is Mrs. Flathers?" she asked in despair. "Can't we give him a bottle or something?"

Maria, more limp, and inanimate than usual, came out of the dim interior of the adjoining room, carrying a yet more limp and inanimate bundle which she exchanged with Miss Lady for hers, and silently retired into the inner room where she was followed by Mrs. Ivy.

"An' this here is ours!" exclaimed Phineas, bending with sudden enthusiasm over the child in Miss Lady's arms, and tenderly lifting the shawl from the weazened face and tiny claw-like hands. "This here is Loreny. There ain't nary one of the rest of 'em lived over two weeks, an' this here one is goin' on four. Kinder looks like we're goin' to keep her with us, don't it?"

Miss Lady could find no answer. The white lips and the blue circles about the small, sunken eyes, bespoke the same disinclination to risk life under such circumstances as had been shown by all the other little Flatherses.

"Course she ain't like that other baby," Phineas went on with genuine earnestness, "but then he's a boy, an' eats more. She's goin' to git fat an' pretty, ain't you, Loreny?"

He put his coarse brown thumb into the little hand which closed about it and clung to it, and sat watching her, unmindful of his visitor.

"She don't look what you'd call strong," he went on, anxiously, "but you wouldn't say she was sick, would you?"

"I am afraid I should," Miss Lady said gravely; "she looks very sick to me."

"She does? Then I'd better git the doctor," Phineas rose hurriedly, then sat down again. "But he never done the others no good. Maria always contended it was him that killed 'em. Ain't there somethin' we kin do? Don't you know somethin'?"

"Yes, I think I do, only you may not be willing to do it."

"You try me. I'll do anything you say, Miss. If the Lord will only spare her--"

"It's not the Lord that's taking her," Miss Lady cried impatiently, "it's you that are sending her, Mr. Flathers. Can't you see that you are killing your baby?"

He looked at her in amazed horror.

"Yes, you are!" went on Miss Lady fiercely, "you are selling her food to another baby; you are letting her mother work so hard that she can scarcely nourish herself. Just look at Mrs. Flathers! Anybody can see that if she had better food and less to do she'd be a different person."

"Oh, Maria was real pretty onct," Phineas said somewhat resentfully, "but when a man marries one of them slim little blondes he never knows what he's gittin'. They sort of shrink up on yer an' git faded an' stringy."

"Yes, but think what she got," said Miss Lady determined to press the matter home. "Myrtella says you were a strong, handsome young man, who could have turned your hand to almost anything, and look at you now! A broken-down loafer, sitting around the saloons, talking religion while your baby starves. I don't wonder Myrtella is ashamed of you, I am ashamed of you, and if this poor little girl ever lives to grow up, she will be ashamed of you, too!"

"No, no," cried Phineas brokenly, his head in his hands, "she won't be that--if the Lord,--I mean if she lives, I'll be a better man, Mis' Squeerington, indeed I will. Nobody ever will know in the world how much I want children of my own. That's why I 'dopted Chick--that's one reason I took in this new one. Seemed like as if my baby went--"

"We'll try to keep her," Miss Lady said with a rush of sympathy. "I'll do everything I can but you must help, Mr. Flathers. You are willing to do your part, aren't you?"

His emotions, used to responding to false stimulants, being now appealed to by the one genuine feeling in him, threatened to become uncontrolled.

"There, there!" Miss Lady said, "if you really want to save her, I think there's a way."

"Not a Orphan's Home?" asked Phineas, lifting one eye from the baby's petticoat where his head had been buried.

"No, a clean home of her own. There's no reason why you shouldn't go to work, Mr. Flathers, and support your family decently. I'll take Chick home with me. Myrtella will be glad to have him for a little visit. Mrs. Ivy is going to send the other baby to the Foundling's Home. Then you'll only have to look after Mrs. Flathers and the baby; you surely can do that, can't you?"

"Yes 'm, I kin do that. 'Course any man kin do that. But I been out of a regular job so long, you'd sorter help me find something to start on?"

"I'll get you something to do, if you will only stick to it. Perhaps Mrs. Sequin can give you work at her new house. She gave our old colored man, Uncle Jimpson, a place."

"Jes' so it ain't garden work, nor gittin' up coal, nor nothin' that brings on rheumatism."

"Have you rheumatism?"

"No, mam, Praise God! I have escaped this far by bein' kereful. You know what it means, Mis' Squeerington, when a man with a family gits down with the rheumatism. There's Jires, now--"

"Yes, and Mr. Jires does more for his family lying flat on his back than you do for yours, up and walking around! You're not fooling me one bit, Mr. Flathers, and there's no use trying to fool yourself. You either mean seriously to go to work or you don't. Which is it?"

Phineas Flathers' strong impulse was to flee the scene. He saw his liberty vanishing before the awful prospect held out by this pretty young lady who could be so sympathetic one moment and so stern the next. But the tiny claw-like fingers of Loreny held him fast. He looked at his imprisoned thumb and smiled tenderly. Then he faced Miss Lady squarely for the first time.

"You help me git a job, Miss, an' I'll promise to take keer of this here baby."

"What you need," came the murmur of Mrs. Ivy's voice from the next room, where she was taking leave of Maria Flathers, "is more beauty in your home, something to uplift you and inspire you. I am going to send you one of our traveling art galleries, you may keep the pictures a whole week, long enough to learn the titles and the names of the painters. Just think what it will mean to lift your tired eyes to a beautiful, serene Madonna! And couldn't you have more color in your home? We find color so stimulating. Scarlet geraniums for instance. Wouldn't you like some scarlet geraniums?"

"I dunno where we'd put 'em at," Maria said wearily, shifting the weight of the Boarder to her other arm. Then her face hardened suddenly, and she wheeled into the kitchen.

"Flathers," she said, "it's him coming round the house now. He said