A CHILD OF THE RAIN


IT was the night that Mona Meeks,
the dressmaker, told him she
didn't love him. He couldn't
believe it at first, because he had
so long been accustomed to the idea that she
did, and no matter how rough the weather or
how irascible the passengers, he felt a song
in his heart as he punched transfers, and rang
his bell punch, and signalled the driver when
to let people off and on.

Now, suddenly, with no reason except a
woman's, she had changed her mind. He
dropped in to see her at five o'clock, just
before time for the night shift, and to give
her two red apples he had been saving for her.
She looked at the apples as if they were in-
visible and she could not see them, and stand-
ing in her disorderly little dressmaking parlor,
with its cuttings and scraps and litter of fab-
rics, she said:

"It is no use, John. I shall have to work
here like this all my life -- work here alone.