It was a cold night, with white flakes falling, and the policeman on the beat greeted Dick as he passed him.  “It is a nice time in the morning for you to be getting home.”

“Oh, hello, Tommy!  I’m going to be married.  How’s that?”

“Who’s the girl?”

“Nannie Ashburner.”

“That little redhead?”

“You’re jealous, Tommy.”

“I am; she’ll cook sausages for you when you come home on cold nights, and kiss you at your front door, and set the talking machine going, with John McCormack shouting love songs as you come in.”

Dick laughed.  “Some picture, Tommy.  And a lot you know about it.  Why don’t you get married and try it out?”

Tommy, who was tall and ruddy and forty, plus a year or two, gave a short laugh.  “I might find somebody to cook the sausages, but there’s only one that I’d care to kiss.”

“So that’s it.  She turned you down, Tommy?”

“She did, and we won’t talk about it.”

“Oh, very well.  Good-night, Tommy.”

“Good-night.”

So Dick passed on, and Tommy Jackson beat his hands against his breast as he made his way through the whirling snow, his footsteps deadened by the frozen carpet which the storm had spread.

Mary Barker was delighted when Nannie told of her engagement to Dick.  She talked it over with Mrs. Ashburner.  “It will be the best thing for her.”

Mrs. Ashburner was not sure.  “I’ve drudged all my life and I hate to see her drudge.”

“She won’t have it as hard as you have had it,” Mary said.  “Dick will always make a good income.”

“She will have a harder time than you’ve had, Mary,” said Mrs. Ashburner, and her eyes swept the pretty room wistfully.  “Many a time when I’ve been down in my steaming old kitchen I have thought of you up here in your blue coat and your pretty slippers, with your hair shining, and I’ve wished to heaven that I had never married.”

“Things haven’t been easy for you,” said Mary gently.

“They have been harder than nails, Mary.  You’ve escaped all that.”

“Yes.”  Mary’s eyes did not meet Mrs. Ashburner’s.  “I have escaped—­that.”

Nannie and her mother slept in the back parlor of the boarding-house.  They had single beds and it was in the middle of the night that Mrs. Ashburner said:  “Are you awake, Nannie?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Well, I can’t seem to get to sleep.  Maybe it’s the coffee and maybe it’s because I have you on my mind.  I keep thinking that I hate to have you get married, honey.”

“Oh, mother, don’t you like Dick?”

“Yes.  It ain’t that.  But it’s nice for you in the office and you don’t have to slave.”

Nannie sat up in bed, and the light from the street lamp shone in and showed her wide-eyed, with her hair in a red glory.  “I shan’t slave,” she said.  “I told Dick.”

“Men don’t know.”  Mrs. Ashburner spoke with a sort of weary bitterness.  “They’ll promise anything.”