he lumbering drays ground up continually with
their wheels, and the wind,--that came into the city from far away
country places of green sweetness, and over hills and ponds and
streams and woods,--flung into the little children's faces.

Luclarion had taken a house,--one of two, that fronted upon a
little planked court; aside, somewhat, from Neighbor Street, as that
was a slight remove from the absolute terrible contact of Arctic
Street. But it was in the heart of that miserable quarter; she could
reach out her hands and touch and gather in, if it would let her,
the wretchedness. She had chosen a place where it was possible for
her to make a nook of refuge, not for herself only, or so much, as
for those to whom she would fain be neighbor, and help to a better
living.

It had been once a dwelling of some well-to-do family of the days
gone by; of some merchant, whose ventures went out and came in at
those wharves below, whence the air swept up pure, then, with its
salt smell, into the streets. The rooms were fairly large; Luclarion
spent money out of her own little property, that had been growing by
care and saving till she could spare from it, in doing her share
toward having it all made as sweet and clean as mortar and whitewash
and new pine-boards and paint and paper could make it. All that was
left of the old, they scoured with carbolic soap; and she had the
windows opened, and in the chimneys that had been swept of their
soot she had clear fires made and kept burning for days.

Then she put her new, plain furnishings into her own two down-stairs
rooms; and the Gallilees brought in theirs above; and beside them,
she found two decent families,--a German paper-hanger's, and that of
a carpenter at one of the theatres, whose wife worked at
dressmaking,--to take the rest. Away up, at the very top, she had
the wide, large room that Hazel spoke of, and a smaller one to which
she climbed to sleep, for the sake of air as near heaven as it could
be got.

One of her lower-rooms was her living and housekeeping room; the
other she turned into a little shop, in which she sold tapes and
needles and cheap calicoes and a few ribbons; and kept a counter on
the opposite side for bread and yeast, gingerbread, candy, and the
like. She did this partly because she must do something to help out
the money for her living and her plans, and partly to draw the women
and children in. How else could she establish any relations between
hersel