Strolling home that night, the Plows were overtaken by some one who ran badly, and as if she were unaccustomed to running.

“Mis’ Plow, Mis’ Plow!” this one called, and Lulu stood beside them.

“Say!” she said.  “Do you know of any job that I could get me?  I mean that I’d know how to do?  A job for money....  I mean a job....”

She burst into passionate crying.  They drew her home with them.

* * * * *

Lying awake sometime after midnight, Lulu heard the telephone ring.  She heard Dwight’s concerned “Is that so?” And his cheerful “Be right there.”

Grandma Gates was sick, she heard him tell Ina.  In a few moments he ran down the stairs.  Next day they told how Dwight had sat for hours that night, holding Grandma Gates so that her back would rest easily and she could fight for her faint breath.  The kind fellow had only about two hours of sleep the whole night long.

Next day there came a message from that woman who had brought up Dwight—­“made him what he was,” he often complacently accused her.  It was a note on a postal card—­she had often written a few lines on a postal card to say that she had sent the maple sugar, or could Ina get her some samples.  Now she wrote a few lines on a postal card to say that she was going to die with cancer.  Could Dwight and Ina come to her while she was still able to visit?  If he was not too busy....

Nobody saw the pity and the terror of that postal card.  They stuck it up by the kitchen clock to read over from time to time, and before they left, Dwight lifted the griddle of the cooking-stove and burned the postal card.

And before they left Lulu said:  “Dwight—­you can’t tell how long you’ll be gone?”

“Of course not.  How should I tell?”

“No.  And that letter might come while you’re away.”

“Conceivably.  Letters do come while a man’s away!”

“Dwight—­I thought if you wouldn’t mind if I opened it—­”

“Opened it?”

“Yes.  You see, it’ll be about me mostly—­”

“I should have said that it’ll be about my brother mostly.”

“But you know what I mean.  You wouldn’t mind if I did open it?”

“But you say you know what’ll be in it.”

“So I did know—­till you—­I’ve got to see that letter, Dwight.”

“And so you shall.  But not till I show it to you.  My dear Lulu, you know how I hate having my mail interfered with.”

She might have said:  “Small souls always make a point of that.”  She said nothing.  She watched them set off, and kept her mind on Ina’s thousand injunctions.

“Don’t let Di see much of Bobby Larkin.  And, Lulu—­if it occurs to her to have Mr. Cornish come up to sing, of course you ask him.  You might ask him to supper.  And don’t let mother overdo.  And, Lulu, now do watch Monona’s handkerchief—­the child will never take a clean one if I’m not here to tell her....”