in'
to come, and they got everythin' fixed up for the weddin' without
tellin' her a thing about it, and one day she was sittin' right there,"
she pointed to the rocking chair in the front parlour window, "when he
come in. He was carryin' a big bunch of cream roses, tied with long
white ribbons. He offered 'em to her, but she wouldn't look at them nor
at him. After awhile they went together into her room and talked for
half an hour, and when they come back she had consented to marry him. He
was real kind. He kept askin' me if she had cried much and thankin' me
for takin' care of her. They were married, and when the weddin' was over
she didn't want to stay with him. She said she wanted her mother, but we
talked to her and told her what was right, and things was fixed up
between them."

She had taken down from its hook in the corner sunlight the canary bird
and his cage. She put them on the table and prepared to give the bird
his bath and fresh seed.

"You see," she said, drawing up a chair, "that's what good employers
will do for you. If you're working in a good place they'll do right by
you, and it don't pay to get down-hearted."

I thanked her and showed the interest I truly felt in the story.
Evidently I must account for my Sundays! It was with the bird now that
Mrs. Brown continued her conversation. He was a Rip Van Winkle in
plumage. His claws trailed over the sand of the cage. Except when Mrs.
Brown had a lodger or two with her, the bird was the only living thing
in her part of the tenement.

"I've had him twenty-five years," she said to me. "Brown give him to
me. I guess I'd miss him if he died." And presently she repeated again:
"I don't believe I even know how much I'd miss him."

On the last evening of my tenement residence I was sitting in a
restaurant of the quarter, having played truant from Mrs. Wood's, whose
Friday fish dinner had poisoned me. My hands had been inflamed and
irritated in consequence, and I was now intent upon a good clean supper
earned by ten hours' work. My back was turned to the door, which I knew
must be open, as I felt a cold wind. The lake brought capricious changes
of the temperature: the thermometer had fallen the night before from
seventy to thirty. I turned to see who the newcomer might be. The sight
of him set my heart beating faster. The restaurant keeper was
questioning the man to find out who he was.... He was evidently
nobody--a fragment of anonymous humanity lashed into