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By Root 926 0

after she sat down. It seemed that a new team had been organized, called the Ramblers; that its first game would be at San Diego, and that Monty had been invited to make the trip. Veda, an expert on such matters, was urging him to go. "There'd better be one eight-goal man with that outfit, or they can stop calling it The Ramblers and call it Mussolini Reviewing the Cavalry, because that's what it's going to be all right. Just a one-way parade of horses, and they won't wake up until the score is about forty to nothing."

"I've got too much to do."

"Such as what?"

"This and that."

"Nothing whatever, if I'm any good at guessing. Monty, you've got to go with them. If you don't, they're sunk. It'll be embarrassing. And they'll simply ruin your horses. After all, they've got some rights."

Polo was a complete mystery to Mildred. How Monty could sell his ponies and still be riding them she couldn't understand, and chiefly she couldn't understand why he was riding them, or anybody was. And yet it tore her heart that he should want to go, and not be able to, and it kept bothering her long after Veda had gone to bed. When he got up to go she pulled him down beside her, and asked: "Do you need money?"

"Oh Lord no!"

His voice, look, and gesture were those of a man pained beyond expression at an insinuation utterly grotesque. But Mildred, nearly two years in the restaurant business, was not fooled. She said: "I think you do."

"Mildred—you leave me without any idea—what to say to you. I've—run into a little bad luck—that's true. My mother has—we all have. But—it's nothing that involves— small amounts. I can still—hold up my end of it—if that's what you're talking about."

"I want you to play in that game."

"I'm not interested."

"Wait a minute."

She found her handbag, took out a crisp $20 bill. Going over to him she slipped it in the breast pocket of his coat. He took it out, with an annoyed grimace, and pitched it back at her. It fell on the floor. She picked it up and dropped it in his lap. With the same annoyed grimace, very much annoyed this time, he picked it up, started to pitch it back at her again, then hesitated, and sat there snapping it between his fingers, so it made little pistol shots. Then, without looking at her: "Well—I'll pay it back."

"That's all right."

"I don't know when—two or three things have to be straightened out first—but it won't be very long. So—if it's understood to be strictly a loan—"

"Any way you want."

That week, with the warm June weather, her business took a sharp drop. For the first time, she had to skip an installment on Veda's piano.

The next week, when he changed his mind about going to a speakeasy that he liked, she slipped $10 into his pocket, and they went. Before she knew it, she was slipping him $10's and $20's regularly, either when she remembered about it, or he stammeringly asked her if he could tap her for another small loan. Her business continued light, and when the summer bad gone, she had managed to make only three deposits on the piano, despite hard scrimping. She was appalled at the amount of money he cost, and fought off a rising irritation about it. She told herself it wasn't his fault, that he was merely going through what thousands of others had already gone through, were still going through. She told herself it was her duty to be helping somebody, and that it might as well be somebody that meant something to her. She also reminded herself she had practically forced the arrangement on him. It was no use. The piano had become an obsession with her by now, and the possibility that it was slipping away from her caused a baffled, frustrated sensation that almost smothered her.

And she was all too human, and the cuts she had received from him demanded their revenge. She began to order him around: timid requests that he haul Veda to Mr. Hannen's, so she wouldn't have to take the bus, now became commands; she curtly told him when he was to show up, when he was to be back, whether he was