chorus, perhaps; but let a new song appear, and the words and music were Robert's as though by divination. And then Sara learned snips and odds and ends of these songs, and, presently Laurie would be shouting one. Like a menacing specter there came to Alice the vision of those six robust vulgar children two houses away, with their phonograph all ready to corrupt her children's taste, if not their morals, by spouting the vulgarest songs of the moment.
In the face of this menace the head of that saintly child, Gladys Grayson, became in Alice's eyes encircled with a halo. Her whine seemed a lovely thing when compared with the phonograph.
In a futile effort to stave off these evil communications, sure to corrupt whatever remnants of good manners remained to her children, Alice forbade them to go without an invitation to visit the house with the phonograph. Early the next morning, an ample, smiling-faced woman came toward her across the sand. Homely kindliness radiated from her; she spoke in a deep throaty voice, so that Alice reflected one would have known, had one met her in the middle of the night, that she was fat; it was a voice that could come only from a throat that was ornamented with three double chins, and neither her accent nor her grammar bore close scrutiny.
"I just come over to tell you to let your children come over whenever they want. I love children, and, laws, the quicker they get acquainted with the neighbors the less nuisance they is around the house! Let 'em come right along with me," she went on. "Come on with me, dearies, and I'll set the phonograph a-going!"
What could Alice do? She was no snob. Kindness and goodness illuminated her neighbor's fat face. Only a heart of stone could have looked at her without a feeling of liking. Her vast lap and her wide bosom were
