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Lena flushed and nodded as he lifted his hat and was gone She walked

slowly ho to stop at her favoritein

the lace store, so occupied was she with the latest story she was

telling herself It was a story in which a large house with soft rugs

and becoround, and soround hovered a man as a type and who loved to spend money on

diamonds The vision was so lovable that she lived with it all the way,

even through the narrow entrance of the lodging-house and up the narrow

stairs, saturated with obsolete smells--smells of dead dinners--to the

very instant when she opened the upper door and faced bald reality and

her mother Mrs Quincy sat by thein a room on the walls of

which the word "shabby" ritten in a handwriting as plain, and in

language far simpler than ever Belshazzar saw on the walls of Babylon

It fairly cried itself froes; fro of now

patternless carpet; froan

Even from the closet door it whispered that there was more shabbiness

hidden in the depths

Mrs Quincy herself was a part of it, for she was to Lena what the faded

rose is to the opening one, a once beautiful woman, whose skin now

looked like wrinkled cream