stew,
"but I could tell you right now, Minnie, I ain't got twenty-five cents
in my clothes, so you got to lend me a couple of dollars till Saturday."

"I'll cash a check for you," Mrs. Perlmutter said firmly, and as soon as
dinner was concluded Morris drew a check for ten dollars and Mrs.
Perlmutter gave him that amount out of her housekeeping money.

It was nearly nine o'clock when Morris and Minnie groped along the dark
hallway of a tenement house in Park Avenue. On the iron viaduct that
bestrides that deceptively named thoroughfare heavy trains thundered at
intervals, and it was only after Morris had knocked repeatedly at the
door of a top-floor apartment that its inmates heard the summons above
the roar of the traffic without.

"Well, Mrs. Schenkmann," Minnie cried cheerfully, "how's the baby
to-night?"

"Schenkmann?" Morris murmured; "Schenkmann? Is that the name of them
people?"

"Why, yes," Minnie replied. "Didn't I tell you that? Mrs. Schenkmann,
this is my husband. And I suppose this is Mr. Schenkmann."

A tall, gaunt person rose from the soap box that did duty as a chair and
ducked his head shyly.

"Schenkmann?" Morris repeated. "You ain't the Schenkmann which he works
by Max Linkheimer?"

Nathan Schenkmann nodded and Mrs. Schenkmann groaned aloud.

"_Ai zuris!_" she cried, "for his sorrow he works by Max Linkheimer.
Eight dollars a week he is supposed to get there, and Linkheimer makes
us live here in his house. Twelve dollars a month we pay for the rooms,
lady, and Linkheimer takes three dollars each week from Nathan's money.
We couldn't even get dispossessed like some people does and save a
month's rent oncet in a while maybe. The rooms ain't worth it, lady,
believe me."

"Does Max Linkheimer own this house?" Morris asked.

"Sure, he's the landlord," Mrs. Schenkmann went on. "I am just telling
you. For eight dollars a week a man should work! Ain't it a disgrace?"

"Well, why doesn't he get another job?" Morris inquired; and then, as
Mr. and Mrs. Schenkmann exchanged embarrassed looks and hung their
heads, Morris blushed.

"What a fine baby!" he cried hurriedly. He chucked the infant under its
chin and made such noises with his tongue as are popularly supposed by
parents to be of a nature entertaining to very young children. In point
of fact the poor little Schenkmann child, with its blue-white
complexion, looked more like a cold-storage chicken than a human baby,
but to the maternal eye of