and Eighth avenues. She mumbled something
from time to time which the colored girl interpreted to the rest as
her continued wish to go home. She was now clearer about her street
and number. The girl, as if after question of her own generous spirit,
said she did not see how _she_ could go with her; she was expected at
home herself.

"Oh, you won't have to go with her; we'll just put her aboard the
Ninth Avenue car," the father encouraged her. He would have encouraged
any one; he was enjoying the whole affair.

At a certain moment, for no apparent reason, the mother decided to sit
down on a door-step. It proved to be the door-step of a house where
from time to time colored people--sometimes of one sex, sometimes of
another--went in or came out. The door seemed to open directly into a
large room where dancing and dining were going on concurrently. At a
long table colored people sat eating, and behind their chairs on both
sides of the room and at the ends of the table colored couples were
waltzing.

The effect was the more curious because, except for some almost
inaudible music, the scene passed in silence. Those who were eating
were not visibly incommoded by those revolving at their backs; the
waltzers turned softly around and around, untempted by the table now
before them, now behind them. When some of the diners or dancers came
out, they stumbled over the old woman on the door-step without minding
or stopping to inquire. Those outside, when they went in, fell over
her with like equanimity and joined the strange company within.

The father murmured to himself the lines,

"'Vast forms that move fantastically
To a discordant melody--'"

with a remote trouble of mind because the words were at once so
graphic and yet so imperfectly applicable. The son and daughter
exchanged a silent wonder as long as they could bear it; then the
daughter asked the colored girl:

"What is it?"

"It's a boarding-house," the girl answered, simply.

"Oh," the daughter said.

Sounds of more decided character than before now came from the figure
on the door-step.

"She seems to be saying something," the daughter suggested in general
terms. "What is she saying?" she asked the colored girl.

The girl stooped over and listened. Then she answered, "She's swearing."

"Swearing? What about? Whom is she swearing at?"

"At me, I reckon. She says, why don't I take her home."

"Well, why doesn't she get up, then?"