Laurel didn’t dare risk getting up and looking at the clock, for, not for anything, would she have disturbed her mother asleep beside her. Her mother had probably been up until morning to finish her packing. No. She would simply have to wait for the alarm-clocks in the servants’ quarters across the alley-way. They usually began to go off about six to six thirty. In the meanwhile she must lie very quietly and not joggle the bed. Cautiously she folded her hands beneath her head, and proceeded to content herself as best she could, gazing about with slow-moving, wide-awake eyes.

There, opposite her, hanging from the electric-light fixture on the wall, was her traveling-suit carefully arranged upon a stretcher. It was the first real suit with separate coat and skirt that Laurel had ever had! Would her father like it, she wondered? Would he like the close little black velvet hat that went with it, with the bunch of red berries on the side? Her mother had copied the hat from a thirty-dollar model, which she had priced in a shop in Boston. It made her look very grown up. Would her father like to have her look grown up?

Beside the suit stood Laurel’s trunk—a beautiful trunk, Laurel thought. Brand-new. It was all ready to be closed. Her dresses, freshly pressed and hanging in order, simply had to be pushed back into the empty space behind. The little drawers beside the dresses were already shut snug and tight. The drawers were filled, Laurel well knew, with various-colored ribbons, bows, and sashes to match the dress; shoes and stockings; and piles of soft white under-clothes in perfect repair. Her mother had been busy for a fortnight with white thread and darning-cotton. For a missing button or a tiny hole used to disturb Laurel’s father years ago.

The beautiful trunk, and its beautiful contents, clashed with its present surroundings. Laurel was aware of it. It flashed over her, with a little stab of joy, that tomorrow morning when she woke up and glanced across the room at her trunk, it would be harmonizing with mahogany and plate-glass and a soft velvet carpet, and a glimpse through an open door of tiles and shining white porcelain. Too bad, oh, too bad, it flashed over her, with another stab that wasn’t joy, that tomorrow morning her mother couldn’t be waking up with her and glancing across at the trunk. Her mother did love grand rooms so! Her mother did love New York so! Tomorrow when Laurel woke up there would be the rumble of New York outside her window hundreds of feet below.