es, they have," said Zerrilla; "there isn't a cent left."

"You're a pretty expensive lot," said Lapham. "Well, here!" He took
out his pocket-book and gave her a note. "I'll be round to-night and
see what can be done."

He shut himself into his room again, and Zerrilla dried her tears, put
the note into her bosom, and went her way.

Lapham kept the porter nearly an hour later. It was then six o'clock,
the hour at which the Laphams usually had tea; but all custom had been
broken up with him during the past months, and he did not go home now.
He determined, perhaps in the extremity in which a man finds relief in
combating one care with another, to keep his promise to Miss Dewey, and
at the moment when he might otherwise have been sitting down at his own
table he was climbing the stairs to her lodging in the old-fashioned
dwelling which had been portioned off into flats. It was in a region
of depots, and of the cheap hotels, and "ladies' and gents'"
dining-rooms, and restaurants with bars, which abound near depots; and
Lapham followed to Miss Dewey's door a waiter from one of these, who
bore on a salver before him a supper covered with a napkin. Zerrilla
had admitted them, and at her greeting a young fellow in the shabby
shore-suit of a sailor, buttoning imperfectly over the nautical blue
flannel of his shirt, got up from where he had been sitting, on one
side of the stove, and stood infirmly on his feet, in token of
receiving the visitor. The woman who sat on the other side did not
rise, but began a shrill, defiant apology.

"Well, I don't suppose but what you'll think we're livin' on the fat o'
the land, right straight along, all the while. But it's just like
this. When that child came in from her work, she didn't seem to have
the spirit to go to cookin' anything, and I had such a bad night last
night I was feelin' all broke up, and s'd I, what's the use, anyway? By
the time the butcher's heaved in a lot o' bone, and made you pay for
the suet he cuts away, it comes to the same thing, and why not GIT it
from the rest'rant first off, and save the cost o' your fire? s'd I."

"What have you got there under your apron? A bottle?" demanded Lapham,
who stood with his hat on and his hands in his pockets, indifferent
alike to the ineffective reception of the sailor and the chair Zerrilla
had set him.

"Well, yes, it's a bottle," said the woman, with an assumption of
virtuous frankness. "It's whisky; I got to have s