It was early in April before he managed to do it.

She and Radcliffe had gone to the Park.  Radcliffe was frisking about in the warm sunshine, while Claire watched him from a nearby bench, when, suddenly, Mr. Van Brandt dropped into the seat beside her.

He did not approach his subject gradually.  He plunged in desperately, headlong, heartlong, seeming oblivious to everything and every one save her.

When, at last, he left her, she, knowing it was for always, was sorely tempted to call him back.  She did care for him, in a way, and the life his love opened up to her would be very different from this.  And yet—­

She closed her cold fingers about Radcliffe’s little warm ones, and rose to lead him across the Plaza.  She did not wonder at his being so conveniently close at hand, nor at his unwonted silence all the way home.  She had not realized, until now that it was snapped, how much the link between this and her old home-life had meant to her.  It meant so much that tears were very near the surface all that day, and even at night, when Martha was holding forth to her brood, they were not altogether to be suppressed.

“Easter comes early this year,” Mrs. Slawson observed.

“’M I going to have a new hat?” inquired Cora.

“What for do you need a new hat, I should like to know?  I s’pose you think you’ll walk up Fifth Avenoo in the church parade, an’ folks’ll stare at you, an’ nudge each other an’ whisper—­’Looka there!  That’s Miss Cora Slawson that you read so much about in the papers.  That one on the right-hand side, wearin’ the French shappo, with the white ribbon, an’ the grand vinaigrette onto it.  Ain’t she han’some?’”

“I think you’re real mean to make fun of me!” pouted Cora.

“I got a dollar an’ a half for the Easter singin’,” announced Sammy.  “Coz I’m permoted an’ I’m goin’ to sing a solo!”

“Careful you don’t get your head so turned you sing outer the other side o’ your mouth,” cautioned Martha. “‘Stead o’ crowin’ so much, you better make sure you know your colic.”

“What you goin’ to do with your money?” inquired Francie, unable to conceive of possessing such vast riches.

“I do’ know.”

“Come here an’ I’ll tell you,” said his mother.  “Whisper!”

At first Sammy’s face did not reveal any great amount of satisfaction at the words breathed into his ear, but after a moment it fairly glowed.

“Ain’t that grand?” asked Martha.

Sammy beamed, then went off whistling.

“He’s goin’ to invest it in a hat for Cora as a s’prise, me addin’ my mite to the fun’ an’ not lettin’ him be any the wiser.  An’ Cora, she’s goin’ to get him a pair o’ shoes with her bank pennies, an’ be this an’ be that, the one thinks he’s clothin’ the other, an’ is proud as Punch of it, which they’re learnin’ manners the same time they’re bein’ dressed,” Martha explained to Claire later.