cement ones, had one evening of mad excitement
over the matter,--of K., not the sidewalks,--and then had accepted the
new situation.

But over the news of K.'s approaching departure it mourned. What was
the matter with things, anyhow? Here was Christine's marriage, which had
promised so well,--awnings and palms and everything,--turning out badly.
True, Palmer Howe was doing better, but he would break out again. And
Johnny Rosenfeld was dead, so that his mother came on washing-days,
and brought no cheery gossip; but bent over her tubs dry-eyed and
silent--even the approaching move to a larger house failed to thrill
her. There was Tillie, too. But one did not speak of her. She was
married now, of course; but the Street did not tolerate such a reversal
of the usual processes as Tillie had indulged in. It censured Mrs. McKee
severely for having been, so to speak, and accessory after the fact.

The Street made a resolve to keep K., if possible. If he had shown
any "high and mightiness," as they called it, since the change in his
estate, it would have let him go without protest. But when a man is the
real thing,--so that the newspapers give a column to his having been
in the city almost two years,--and still goes about in the same shabby
clothes, with the same friendly greeting for every one, it demonstrates
clearly, as the barytone put it, that "he's got no swelled head on him;
that's sure."

"Anybody can see by the way he drives that machine of Wilson's that he's
been used to a car--likely a foreign one. All the swells have foreign
cars." Still the barytone, who was almost as fond of conversation as
of what he termed "vocal." "And another thing. Do you notice the way
he takes Dr. Ed around? Has him at every consultation. The old boy's
tickled to death."

A little later, K., coming up the Street as he had that first day, heard
the barytone singing:--

"Home is the hunter, home from the hill,
And the sailor, home from sea."

Home! Why, this WAS home. The Street seemed to stretch out its arms to
him. The ailanthus tree waved in the sunlight before the little house.
Tree and house were old; September had touched them. Christine sat
sewing on the balcony. A boy with a piece of chalk was writing something
on the new cement under the tree. He stood back, head on one side, when
he had finished, and inspected his work. K. caught him up from behind,
and, swinging him around--

"Hey!" he said severely. "Don't yo