"MARY'S GOING TO HAVE A HOME!"

Bill sat in a deep chair and held out his arms. Timorously, as if she were taking a great risk, a white-capped nurse stooped starchily and placed within the curve of them a soft little bundle. Bill held his breath until the precious, warm little body lay cuddled against his chest.

Once each day, for a stingy ten minutes or so, Bill was permitted to hold his daughter in his arms. Sometimes, if the nurse and Doris forgot their vigilance for a space, Bill could fumble and uncover the smallest, pinkest, squirmiest feet he had ever seen in his life. On one memorable occasion, when fire engines went clanging past the silk-hung windows, he had been left unobserved long enough to brush the soft pink soles against his lips.

Little Miss Mary Dale was growing at the astonishing rate of a pound a week, which Bill considered phenomenal and told of whenever he decided that it would not be a breach of etiquette to admit that he was human enough to be proud of his baby; which tells the story of Bill's servitude to conventions which he hated even while he meekly obeyed the rules.

What Bill wanted to do was carry his daughter down into the lobby and show her off to everybody who came in. Why not, since there wasn't another baby in San Francisco that could come within a mile of her for looks and intelligence? What he did do was sneak up to the room set aside for the nursery—they were still living in a hotel, which at this particular time was the Palace—and pull down the silken coverlets and gaze at little Mary until he was discovered and shooed away. After two months of this, Bill was beginning to feel abused. She was his baby, as well as Doris'. He believed that he had a right to look at her now and then, since Doris assumed the privilege of rocking her and talking unintelligibly to her by the hour.

Still, Bill was accustomed to carrying a proper sense of his limitations about with him. A year had convinced him that husbands didn't amount to much, after all; that they were frequently a real obstacle to a woman's pursuit of happiness. And since his whole soul was still fixed upon making Doris completely happy, he eliminated himself from the scene whenever he saw a certain look in the eyes of his wife, and ministered to her happiness as unobtrusively as possible. One deep hurt remained with Bill, do what he would to forget it. Doris had not been pleased about little Mary,—until she had actually arrived and won her own place in the family. That had hurt Bill terribly and made his own eagerness seem a fault which he must hide as best he could.

Well, women had their own ideas of things, their own hopes and ambitions. Doris didn't seem to have had enough of the glitter of life, yet. She didn't want to have a house and settle down to real home life. Bill was beginning to feel that he did not understand her at all. Home life would be lonely, she complained; would shut her away from the things she loved best. For instance, Doris never tired of the big, beautiful dining places with the music and the soft lights, the flash of jewels and the hovering, obsequious servants. She wanted the deference that bowed and waited for largess. She loved the smiles and the nods from rich diners at other tables. She loved to have her maid telephone to the steward that he would please lay so many extra covers at the William Gordon Dale table. And would he please see that there were just a few orchids peeping out from dark-green foliage, massed very low,—that glossy green which Mrs. Dale likes so well?

And then she liked to forget all about the dinner until the guests had actually arrived, and to know that the arrangements would be perfect to the slightest detail,—with Doris herself the most perfect part of it, smiling and showing the dimple in her left cheek, and sparkling across at her husband, addressing him humorously as Bill-dear. Doris, Bill observed (because the good Lord gave him powers of observation which worked automatically) had begun calling him Bill-dear openly, in social gatherings, immediately after she heard Mrs. Baker Cole say "angel husband" in an adorably quizzical tone that never failed to bring a smile. It rather spoiled the Bill-dear for him in private, but Doris never guessed that.

Neither did she guess Bill's inner shame that his child should be born in a hotel. Bill flushed in secret over the thought that, years afterward, when little Mary asked about her birthplace, her parents must refer her to suite E, Palace Hotel,—which had housed thousands before their baby opened her eyes there, and would house thousands after she had been carried away. Being born in a hotel, in Bill's estimation, was a little better than being born on a train, but not much.

So Bill's dream of a home with Doris—a place of their very own—seemed as far off as ever; and the fact that he could have bought a mansion fine enough even for Doris with the money he had paid to hotel cashiers in the past twelve months did not help him to resignation.

A nomadic life; a life that to Bill seemed inexcusably shiftless, temporary. They had sampled several hotels, in the several cities they had visited during the first few months. They were all alike,—luxurious shelters for the traveling rich. He went about thinking how all the other guests had homes somewhere; places where they dropped anchor occasionally, at least, and took stock of themselves. He began to try and hide the fact that he and Doris had no home; that they were always tagged with a number and their mail messed up with forwarding addresses. And now, here was little Miss Mary without a home that she could look back to afterwards with affection. To Bill the thing was becoming a disgrace, the blame resting on his own shoulders. He had promised Doris that she should live where she pleased. Now he owed another duty to his daughter.

"She's beginning to notice things, Bill-dear." Doris came up and sat on the arm of a near-by chair. "To-day her eyes followed the flash of my rings—I tried her out, and she really did notice. Wake up, s'eepy thing! Show daddy how 'em can smile!"

"We'll have to get a place of our own," Bill began tentatively, consciously treading thin ice. "We can't have her think a hotel like this is all the kind of home there is in the world. Honey, don't you think a nice house up on the hill—or maybe in some other town——"

"Oh, Bill, please don't start that! You're gone half the time, almost—running around the country playing you're doing important things. What would I do in a great big house with nobody around but servants? I'd go crazy, that's all. And then, if we wanted to go somewhere, like New York or Europe, there would be the house to worry about. As it is, all we have to do is pack our trunks—and we can hire professional packers to do that. We have every comfort we could possibly have at home, and a lot besides. And I can see people, Bill, without giving a dinner or a card party or something. I'm going to have an at-home day—lots of permanent guests here do. And if I want to entertain, look at the advantages.

"Besides," she added artfully, "you know you couldn't keep in touch with men half so easily if you were struck off in a big house on Nob Hill or somewhere."

Bill did not answer for a minute. He was apparently quite absorbed with the baby's hands; he had never seen such tiny, soft hands before.

"I wouldn't run around so much, honey, if I had a home," he said quietly, looking up at Doris.

"Oh, fudge! Men with homes are gone more. You can't fool me! I've heard the women talk who have homes. Their husbands are always gone somewhere, their servants are always stealing them blind or quitting, and the house is a white elephant. Besides, I don't know where I'd like to live permanently. I can't picture myself settling down in any one town—can you, Bill? Now be honest."

"Yes. Parowan."

Well, she had wanted him honest, and she got the truth. Nor did she relish it, judging from the look on her face.

"Parowan! Of all the places in the world——"

"It's where we got the money to spend here," Bill stated stubbornly. "I've had some mighty happy times there, even if I did eat bacon and beans and hike a hundred miles after them sometimes. It made our stake for us—that same Parowan. Only for that mountain, you'd still be hazing your dad's cattle away from the loco patches, maybe, and helping your mother with the dishes. I don't wish you were—I'm tickled to death that you can wear diamonds and hire a nigger to comb your hair for you. But just the same, Doris, let's not get our heads so high in the air we can't see what Parowan ought to mean to us.

"This baby's mine—and yours. We've got her, and we haven't got a roof for her to sleep under, except what we hire by the week. Only for Parowan, we couldn't have married at all; don't forget that. You wouldn't have married a poor prospector, and if you would, I wouldn't have let you. It was the gold I found on that mountain side that made it possible for me to ask you to marry me. And it was the gold that made you say yes."

He swallowed as if there were some obstruction in his throat and went on, staring straight before him,—seeing that cut in the gulch's side, perhaps, and the slim girl in the stained khaki riding skirt and cotton shirt waist staring at the vein of yellow-flecked rock.

"You can't think of any place where you want to give our child a home. Well, I can! She's going to have one, whether it's ever lived in or not. It's going to be at Parowan, on the spot where her daddy lived when he found the gold that made her possible. I wouldn't do it for you, against your wish. You like this froth, and I want you to have what you like best. But Mary's going to have a home."

He did not raise his voice; indeed he almost whispered the words. Yet they struck Doris like a lash. Never before had Bill opposed her wishes, or declared that he would do a thing which Doris had not first decided to do.

"You can't take her away from me," she said breathlessly.

"I don't intend to take her away from you." Bill's tone was flat, emotionless, because he dared not slip the leash from his emotions. "Some day, when she's old enough to know what she's missing, the kid may want to come—home. There's going to be one for her. It's her right."

"In that case," said Doris coldly, "why not build it in civilization, at least, where she can use it?"

"I'm hoping," said Bill, very quietly, "that when my girl grows up she'll have some sense."