'n't no bigger'n
a butternut. She done the best thing she could do an' set me to work.

"'Mr. Bemus,' she says, first off--everybody else called me Peleg--'Mr.
Bemus,' she says, 'I wonder if you'd mind takin' an old
newspaper--there's one somewheres around--an' stuffin' in the cracks of
this window an' stop its rattlin'?'

"I laid my sleigh-bell down an' done as she says; an' while I fussed
with the window, that seems though all Printin' House Square couldn't
stuff up, she talked on, chipper as a squirrel, all about the buildin',
an' who lived where, an' how many kids they was, an' wouldn't it be nice
if they had an elevator like the model tenement we was payin' rent for,
an' so on. I'd never 'a' dreamt she was sick if I hadn't looked 'round a
time or two at her poor, burnin'-up face. Then bime-by he brought the
supper in, an' when he went to lift her up, she just naturally laid back
an' fainted. But she was all right again in a minute, brave as two, an'
she was like a child when she see what he'd brought her--a big platter
for a tray, with milk-toast an' an apple an' five cents' worth o' dates.
She done her best to eat, too, and praised him up, an' the poor soul
hung over her, watchin' every mouthful, feedin' her, coaxin' her,
lookin' like nothin' more'n a boy himself. When I couldn't stand it no
longer, I took an' jingled the sleigh-bell.

"'I'm a-goin',' I says, 'to hang this outside the door here, an' run
this nice long string through the transom. An' to-morrow,' I says, 'when
you want anything, just you pull the string a time or two, an' I'll be
somewheres around.'

"She clapped her hands, her eyes shinin'.

"'Oh, _goodey_!' she says. 'Now I won't be alone. Ain't it nice,' she
says, 'that there ain't no glass in the transom? If we lived in the
model tenement, we couldn't do that,' she says, laughin' some.

"An' that young fellow, he followed me to the door an' just naturally
shook hands with me, same's though I'd been his kind. Then he followed
me on out into the hall.

"'We had a little boy,' he says to me low, 'an' it died four months ago
yesterday, when it was six days old. She ain't ever been well since,' he
says, kind of as if he wanted to tell somebody. But I didn't know what
to say, an' so I found fault with the kerosene lamp in the hall, an'
went on down.

"Nex' day I knew the doctor come again. An' 'way 'long in the afternoon
I was a-tinkerin' with the stair rail when I heard the sleigh-bell ring.