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her father had said. She must get the broom and begin.
    She hurried out into the hall, and a glimpse of the narrow stairway winding above her drew her to investigate. And then a sudden thought: Carey. Where was Carey? Hadn’t he come home at all last night? She had no recollection of hearing him, and yet she might have fallen asleep earlier than she thought. She mounted the stairs and stood aghast before the desolation there.
    The little closet Louise had spoken of with its skylight and its meager cot of twisted blankets, its chair with a medley of Harry’s clothes, and its floor strewn with a varied collection, was dreary enough, but there was yet some semblance of attempt at order. The muddy shoes stood in a row; some garments were in piles, and some hung on nails as if there had been an attempt at good housekeeping by the young owner. There was even a colored picture of a baseball favorite and a drawing of a famous game. One could feel that the young occupant had taken possession with some sense of ownership in the place. But the front room was like a desert of destruction where lay bleaching the bones of a former life as if swept there by a whirlwind.
    The headboard and footboard of the iron bedstead stood against the wall together like a corpse cast aside and unburied. On the floor in the very middle of the room lay the springs, and upon them the worn and soiled mattress, hardly recognizable by that name now because of the marks of heavy, muddy shoes, as if it had been not only slept upon but walked over with shoes straight from the contact of the street in bad weather. Sheets, there were none, and the pillow, soiled and with a hole burnt in one corner of its ticking, lay guiltless of a pillowcase, with a beaten, sodden impression of a head in its center. There was a snarl of soiled blanket and torn patchwork quilt across the foot, tossed to one side, and all about this excuse for a bed was strewn the most heterogeneous mass of objects that Cornelia had ever seen collected. Clothes, soiled and just from the laundry, all in one mass; neckties tangled among books and letters; cheap magazines and parts of automobiles; a silk hat and a white evening vest keeping company with a pair of greasy overalls and two big iron wrenches; and over everything cigarette buds.
    The desolation was complete. The bureau had turned its back to the scene in despair and was face to the wall, as it had been placed by the movers. It was then and not till then that Cornelia understood how recent had been the moving and how utter the rout of the poor, patient mother, whose wonderful housekeeping had always been the boast of the neighborhood where they had lived, and whose fastidiousness had been almost an obsession.
    Cornelia stood in the door and gasped in horror as her eyes traveled from one corner of the room to another and back again, and her quick mind read the story of her brother’s life and one deep cause of her dear mother’s breakdown. She remembered her father’s words about Carey and how he hoped she would be able to help him, and then her memory went back to the days when she and Carey were inseparable. She saw the bright, eager face of her brother only two years younger than herself, always merry, with a jest on his lips and a twinkle in his eyes, but a kind heart and a willingness always to serve. Had Carey in three short years fallen to this? Because there was no excuse for an able-bodied young man to live in a mess like this. No young man with a mite of self-respect would do it. And Carey knew better. Carey had been brought up to take care of himself and his things. Nobody could mend a bit of furniture or fix the plumbing or sweep a room or even wash out a blanket for Mother better than Carey when he was only fifteen. And for Carey, as she knew him, to be willing to lie down for at least more than one night in a room like this and go off in the morning leaving it this way was simply unthinkable. How Carey must have changed to