refrained from uttering the flippancy which had been on the tip of her tongue. Lena May, having put away the dishes, turned to ask solicitously: “Wouldn’t Gwen let you in, Glow?”

“No, I didn’t hear a sound, but the tray is gone.” The gentle Lena May was pleased to hear that.

“Poor Gwen, she is making it harder for herself and for all of us,” Gloria said; then added, “Are you girls ready to go with me? I’d like to get over to the city early, after the first rush is over and the midday rush has not begun.”

Exultant Bobs could not refrain from waving the dishcloth she still held. “Hurray for us!” she sang out. “Three adventurers starting on they know not what wild escapade. Wait until I change my togs, Glow, and I’ll be with you.” Then, glancing down at her riding habit, “Unless this will do?” she questioned her sister.

“Of course not, dear. We’ll all wear tailored suits.”

It was midmorning when three fashionably attired girls for the first time in their lives ascended to the Third Avenue Elevated, going uptown. At that hour there were few people traveling in that direction and they had a car almost to themselves. As they were whirled past tenements, so close that they could plainly see the shabby furniture in the flats beyond, the younger girls suddenly realized how great was the contrast between the life that was ahead of them and that which they were leaving. The thundering of the trains, the constant rumble of traffic below, the discordant cries of hucksters, reached them through the open windows. “It’s hard to believe that a meadow lark is singing anywhere in the world,” Bobs said, turning to Gloria. “Or that little children are playing in those meadows,” the older girl replied. She was watching the pale, ragged children hanging to railings around fire escapes on a level with the train windows.

“Poor little things!” Lena May’s tone was pitying, “I don’t see how they can do much playing in such cramped, crowded places.”

“I don’t suppose they even know the meaning of the word,” Bobs replied.

They left the train at the station nearest the Seventy-seventh Street Settlement. Since Gloria was to be employed there, she planned starting from that point to search for the nearest suitable dwelling. They found themselves in a motley crowd composed of foreign women and children, who jostled one another in an evident effort to reach the sidewalk where, in two-wheeled carts, venders of all kinds of 

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