street, bore out the claim.

Upon the house where Susan Brown lived with her aunt, and her aunt's
three daughters, there was no sign, although Mrs. Lancaster, and
Mary Lou, Virginia and Georgianna had supported themselves for many
years by the cheerless process known as taking boarders. Sometimes,
when the Lancasters were in especially trying financial straits, the
possibility of a little sign was discussed. But so far, the
humiliating extreme had been somehow avoided.

"No, I feel that Papa wouldn't like it," Mrs. Lancaster persisted.

"Oh, Papa! He'd have died first!" the daughters would agree, in
eager sympathy. And the question of the sign would be dismissed
again.

"Papa" had been a power in his day, a splendid, audacious,
autocratic person, successful as a pioneer, a miner, a speculator,
proud of a beautiful and pampered Southern wife and a nurseryful of
handsome children. These were the days of horses and carriages, when
the Eddy Street mansion was built, when a score of servants waited
upon Ma and the children. But terrible times came finally upon this
grandeur, the stock madness seized "Papa," he was a rich man one
day, a millionaire the next,--he would be a multi-millionaire next
week! Ma never ceased to be grateful that Papa, on the very day that
his fortune crashed to ruin, came home too sick and feverish to
fully comprehend the calamity, and was lying in his quiet grave
before his widow and her children did.

Mrs. Lancaster, in her fresh expensive black, with her five black-