trouble her. 

 Jeremiah spent the morning in going from office to office. First he told the unfavourable report of his doctor. He met sympathy in some quarters, curt refusals in others, and worst of all he sometimes met: "Cancer of the stomach? Not much chance—" 

 At half after one, sick from the sunlight of the cruelly hot streets, he turned into an office for his last try. He felt numb.... His tongue was thick. He looked with resentment on a well-dressed woman who waited opposite him. "Flowers on her bunnit," he thought, "while my Mary—"  He thought of his hard labour and, with bitterness, of the "Boss."  He had never felt this way before. If he'd had money, he reflected, how quickly that first doctor would have helped him.... The other refusals had come from truer reasons. His own doctor's report, although Jeremiah didn't realise this, had stopped all efforts. If the doctor had said no one but Van Dorn could help her, Lord, what chance had they? This was their line of reason. 

 Jeremiah sat in the outer waiting room. At last his turn came. The doctor looked tired; he was gruff in his questions.  "I'll come with you and look at her," he said at last. Jeremiah felt a sob rise in his throat. The doctor rang a bell. 

 "Tell Miss Evelyn," he said to the maid who answered him, "that we'll have to give up our drive this afternoon. She's my little girl," he explained to Jeremiah.  "Her mother's dead,—I don't see as much of her as I should. A doctor has no business with a family. I'm ready. Come on." 

 They went out by a back door, leaving an office full of patients. The sun was hot. Jeremiah prayed fervently even while he answered the doctor's questions and responded to his pleasantries. At last they came to the building which held Jeremiah's home. They mounted the long stairs. Two or three children, playing on them, stopped their squabbling and looked after the doctor with awe. 

 "He's got a baby in that case," said one, a fat little girl with aggressive pig-tails. 

 "There is too many now," said a boy.  "They don't all get fed, and they're all beat up fierce. Our teacher in that there corner mission sez as how Gawd is love. Why don't he come down here an' love?" 

 There was an awed silence after this. Outright heresy as it was, the immediate descent of a thunderbolt was expected. 

 Upstairs Jeremiah opened the door of the flat. The kitchen was 

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