hanged into
untidy flats, some empty, some with little shops or agencies in their
basements, and some, like this one, second-class boarding-houses. On
Second and Third avenues, under the elevated trains, were miles of
shops; all small shops, crowded upon each other. Every block had its
two or three saloons, its meat market, its delicacy store, its tiny
establishments where drygoods and milk and shoes and tobacco and fruit
and paints and drugs and candies and hats were sold, and the women who
drifted up and down all morning shopping usually patronized the nearest
store. In the basements were smaller stores where ice and coal and
firewood and window-glass and tinware might be had, and along the
street supplementary carts of fruit and vegetables were usually
aligned, so that, especially to inexperienced eyes like Martie's, the
whole presented a delightfully distracting scene.

She accepted the fact that Wallace must come and go as best suited his
engagements. Her delight in every novel phase of life in the big city
fired his own enthusiasm, and it was with great satisfaction that he
observed her growing friendship with Mrs. Curley.

There were four or five men in the boarding-house, but they usually
disappeared after an early breakfast and did not come back until
supper, so that the two women had a long, idle day to themselves.
Henny, the coloured maid, droned and laughed with friends of her own in
the kitchen. Mrs. Curley, mighty, deep-voiced, with oily, graying hair
and spotted clothes, spent most of the day in a large chair by the open
window, and Martie, thinly dressed, wandered about aimlessly. She never
tired of the old woman's pungent reminiscences, browsing at intervals
on the old magazines and books that were scattered over the house, even
going into the kitchen to convulse the appreciative Henny, and make a
cake or pudding for dinner.

Summer smouldered in the city. The sun seemed to have been shining hot
and merciless for hours when Martie rose at six, to stand yawning at
her window. At nine families began to stream by, to the Park;
perspiring mothers pushing the baby carriages, small children, already
eating, staggering before and behind. By ten the streets were deserted,
baked, silent, glaring. Martie and Mrs. Curley would establish
themselves in a cool back room, as to-day, with a pitcher of iced tea
near at hand.

Somehow the hot, empty hours dragged by. At four o'clock the two, with
perhaps a friend or