in the morning. Once five in the afternoon.

"Do these New York women wear hats in the house all the time?" demanded
Hosea Brewster, worriedly. "I think they sleep in 'em. It's a wonder
they ain't bald. Maybe they are. Maybe that's why. Anyway, it makes you
feel like a book agent."

He sounded excited and tired, "Now, father!" said Mrs. Brewster,
soothingly.

They were in the elevator that was taking them up to the fourth and
(according to Pinky) choicest apartment. The building was what is known
as a studio apartment, in the West Sixties. The corridors were done in
red flagstones, with gray-tone walls. The metal doors were painted gray.

Pinky was snickering. "Now she'll say: 'Well, _we've_ been very
comfortable here.' They always do. Don't look too eager."

"No fear," put in Hosey Brewster.

"It's really lovely. And a real fireplace. Everything new and good.
She's asking two hundred and twenty-five. Offer her one seventy-five.
She'll take two hundred."

"You bet she will," growled Hosea.

She answered the door--hatted; hatted in henna, that being the season's
chosen colour. A small, dark foyer, overcrowded with furniture; a studio
living room, bright, high-ceilinged, smallish; one entire side was
window. There were Japanese prints, and a baby grand piano, and a lot of
tables, and a davenport placed the way they do it on the stage, with its
back to the room and its arms to the fireplace, and a long table just
behind it, with a lamp on it, and books, and a dull jar thing, just as
you've see it in the second-act library.

Hosea Brewster twisted his head around and up to gaze at the lofty
ceiling. "Feel's if I was standing at the bottom of a well," he
remarked.

But the hatted one did not hear him. "No; no dining room," she was
saying, briskly. "No, indeed. I always use this gate-legged table. You
see? It pulls out like this. You can easily seat six--eight, in fact."

"Heaven forbid!" in fervent _sotto voce_ from Father Brewster.

"It's an enormous saving in time and labour."

"The--kitchen!" inquired Mrs. Brewster.

The hat waxed playful. "You'll never guess where the kitchen is!" She
skipped across the room. "You see this screen?" They saw it. A really
handsome affair, and so placed at one end of the room that it looked a
part of it. "Come here." They came. The reverse side of the screen was
dotted with hooks, and on each hook hung a pot, a pan, a ladle, a spoon.
And there was the tiny gas range, the in