I must see that they form friendships in their own class." But life, as she had already discovered, has a sardonic manner of its own in such crises.

That night she planned carefully, lying awake in the darkness, the subterfuges and excuses by which she would keep Archibald away from O'Hara, and the very next afternoon when she came home from work she found confusion in the street, a fire engine at the corner, and, on the steps of her home, the boy clinging rapturously to the hand of the man.
"You ought to have been here, mother," cried Archibald in tones of ecstatic excitement.

"We had a fire down the street in that apartment house--and before the firemen came Mr.O'Hara went in and got out a woman and some children who had been overcome by smoke.

He had to lower them from a fire-escape, and he got every one of them out before the engine could get here.

I saw it all.