She showed no particular pleasure when her mother found the sort of place they wanted, but went to work with her in sullen silence.  Mrs. Hamilton could not understand it all, and many a night she wept and prayed over the change in this child of her heart.  There were times when she felt that there was nothing left to work or fight for.  The letters from Berry in prison became fewer and fewer.  He was sinking into the dull, dead routine of his life.  Her own letters to him fell off.  It was hard getting the children to write.  They did not want to be bothered, and she could not write for herself.  So in the weeks and months that followed she drifted farther away from her children and husband and all the traditions of her life.

After Joe’s first night at the Banner Club he had kept his promise to Hattie Sterling and had gone often to meet her.  She had taught him much, because it was to her advantage to do so.  His greenness had dropped from him like a garment, but no amount of sophistication could make him deem the woman less perfect.  He knew that she was much older than he, but he only took this fact as an additional sign of his prowess in having won her.  He was proud of himself when he went behind the scenes at the theatre or waited for her at the stage door and bore her off under the admiring eyes of a crowd of gapers.  And Hattie?  She liked him in a half-contemptuous, half-amused way.  He was a good-looking boy and made money enough, as she expressed it, to show her a good time, so she was willing to overlook his weakness and his callow vanity.

“Look here,” she said to him one day, “I guess you ’ll have to be moving.  There ’s a young lady been inquiring for you to-day, and I won’t stand for that.”

He looked at her, startled for a moment, until he saw the laughter in her eyes.  Then he caught her and kissed her.  “What ‘re you givin’ me?” he said.

“It ’s a straight tip, that ’s what.”

“Who is it?”

“It ’s a girl named Minty Brown from your home.”

His face turned brick-red with fear and shame.  “Minty Brown!” he stammered.

Had that girl told all and undone him?  But Hattie was going on about her work and evidently knew nothing.

“Oh, you need n’t pretend you don’t know her,” she went on banteringly.  “She says you were great friends down South, so I ’ve invited her to supper.  She wants to see you.”

“To supper!” he thought.  Was she mocking him?  Was she restraining her scorn of him only to make his humiliation the greater after a while?  He looked at her, but there was no suspicion of malice in her face, and he took hope.

“Well, I ’d like to see old Minty,” he said.  “It ’s been many a long day since I ’ve seen her.”

All that afternoon, after going to the barber-shop, Joe was driven by a tempest of conflicting emotions.  If Minty Brown had not told his story, why not?  Would she yet tell, and if she did, what would happen?  He tortured himself by questioning if Hattie would cast him off.  At the very thought his hand trembled, and the man in the chair asked him if he had n’t been drinking.