Peace was presently restored, and Julia was asked if she would like to go see her Auntie Mame, and assented with a hiccough.  So her mottled little face was wiped with a soggy gray towel, and her bonnet straightened, and they set out.

Mrs. Povey was so sympathetic that Emeline stayed with her for dinner, a casual meal which Myrtle Montague and a sister actress came in to share.  Julia sat with them at table, and stuffed solemnly on fresh bread and cheese, crab salad and smoked beef, hot tomato sauce and delicious coffee.  The coffee came to table in a battered tin pot, and the cream was poured into the cups from the little dairy bottle, with its metal top, but Julia saw these things as little as any one else—­as little as she saw the disorderly welter of theatrical effects in the Poveys’ neglected rooms, the paint on the women’s faces, the ugly violence and coarseness of their talk.

But she did see that they were an impulsive, warm-hearted, generous set.  Nobody ever spoke crossly to her, she was given the freedom of their rooms, she listened to their chatter, she was often caught up for embraces heavy with cologne; they loved to dress her up in preposterous costumes, and shouted with laughter at the sight of her in Dolly Varden bonnets, Scotch kilts, or spectacles and wigs.  “Baby doll,” “Lovey,” and “Honey Babe” were Julia’s names here, and she was a child hungry for love and eager to earn it.  To-night she ate her supper in that silence so grateful to grown people, and afterward found some stage jewellery and played with it until her head was too heavy to hold up any longer.  Then she went to sleep upon an odorous couch piled deep with all sorts of odd garments, her feet thrust into a tangle of lifeless satin pillows, her head upon the fur lining of some old cape, a banjo prodding her uncomfortably whenever she stirred.

Julia—­all pins and needles—­was presently jerked up into a glare of lights, and tied into the rose-crowned bonnet, and buttoned into the velvet coat again.  She had not been covered as she slept, and sneezed and shivered in the cold night air.  Emeline walked along briskly, and Julia stumbled beside her.  The child was in such an agony of fatigue and chill that every separate step toward bed was dreaded by this time.  She fell against her mother, as Emeline tore off shoes and stockings, stretched blundering, blind little arms for her nightgown sleeves, and sank deliciously against her pillows, already more than half asleep.

But Emeline sat wide eyed, silent, waiting for George.

George did not come home at all that night.  On the next afternoon--Sunday afternoon—­Julia was playing in the street with two other small girls.  Their game was simple.  The three huddled into the deep doorway that led to Julia’s home, clinging tight to each other, laughing and shouting.  Then at a given signal they rushed screaming forth, charged across the street as if pursued by a thousand furies, and took shelter in a similar doorway, next to the saloon across the street.  This performance had been repeated, back and forth, perhaps a dozen times, when Julia found her father waylaying her.