I go to the address in Sixty-seventh Street on the West Side and find that Vida is keeping a boarding house.  But I was ready to cheer Aunt Esther with a telegram one second after she opened the door on me—­in a big blue apron and a dustcap on her hair.  She was the happiest young woman I ever did see—­shining it out every which way.  A very attractive girl about twenty-five, with a slim figure and one of these faces that ain’t exactly of howling beauty in any one feature, but that sure get you when they’re sunned up with joy like this one was.

She was pleased to death when I told her my name, and of course I must come in and stay for dinner so I could see all her boarders that was like one big family and, above all, meet her darling husband Clyde when he got home from business.  The cheeriest thing she was, and I adore to meet people that are cheery, so I said nothing would please me better.  She took me up to her little bedroom to lay my things off and then down to the parlour where she said I must rest and excuse her because she still had a few little things to supervise.  She did have too.  In the next hour and a half she run up and down two flights of stairs at least ten times.  I could hear her sweeping overhead and jamming things round on the stove when she raced down to the kitchen.  Yes, she had several little things to supervise and one girl to help her.  I peeked into the kitchen once while I was wandering through the lower rooms, and she seemed to be showing this girl how to boil potatoes.  I wondered if she never run down and if her happy look was really chronic or mebbe put on for my benefit.  Still, I could hear her singing to herself and she moved like a happy person.

In looking round the parlour I was greeted on every wall by pictures of a charming youth I guessed was darling Clyde.  A fine young face he had, and looked as happy as Vida herself.  There was pictures of him with a tennis racket and on a sailboat and with a mandolin and standing up with his college glee club and setting on a high-powered horse and so forth, all showing he must be a great social favourite and one born to have a good time.  I wondered how he’d come to confer himself on the cashier of a quick-lunch place.  I thought it must be one of these romances.  Then—­I’m always remembering the foolishest things—­I recalled a funny little absent look in Vida’s eyes when she spoke of her darling coming home from business.  I thought now it must of been pride; that he was performing some low job in a factory or store while she run the boarding house, and she didn’t want me to know it.  I thought he must be a pretty fine rich man’s son to stand the gaff this way when cast off by his father for mixing up with a daughter of the people.