was
determined to go through to the end. But her heart _would_ beat and her
hands _would_ tremble. She climbed up six flights of winding stairs, and
found herself weak and dizzy when she reached the top and gazed around
her. She was in a great half-story room, eighty feet square. The most of
it was filled with heaps of old furniture and bedding, rolls of carpet,
of canvas, of oilcloth, and odds and ends of discard of unused household
gear--the dust thick over all. A little space had been left around three
sides, to give access to three rows of cell-like rooms, in each of which
the ceiling sloped from the very door to a tiny window at the level of
the floor. In each room was a bed, a bureau that served for wash-stand,
a small looking-glass, and one or two trunks. Women's dresses hung on
the whitewashed walls. She found No. 11, threw off, desperately, her hat
and jacket, and sunk down on the little brown tin trunk, all trembling
from head to foot.

"Hello," called a cheery voice. She looked up and saw a girl in a dirty
calico dress.

"Just come?" inquired this person, with agreeable informality. She was a
good-looking large girl, with red hair and bright cheeks. She leaned
against the door-post and polished her finger-nails with a little brush.
Her hands were shapely.

"Ain't got onto the stair-climbing racket yet, eh? You'll get used to
it. 'Louise Levy,'" she read the name on the trunk. "You don't look like
a sheeny. Can't tell nothin' 'bout names, can you? My name's Slattery.
You'd think I was Irish, wouldn't you? Well, I'm straight Ne' York. I'd
be dead before I was Irish. Born here. Ninth Ward an' next to an engine
house. How's that? There's white Jews, too. I worked for one, pickin'
sealskins down in Prince Street. Most took the lungs out of me. But that
wasn't why I shook the biz. It queered my hands--see? I'm goin' to be
married in the Fall to a German gentleman. He ain't so Dutch when you
know him, though. He's a grocer. Drivin' now; but he buys out the boss
in the Fall. How's that? He's dead stuck on my hooks, an' I have to keep
'em lookin' good. I come here because the work was light. I don't have
to work--only to be doin' somethin', see? Only got five halls and the
lamps. You got a fam'ly job, I s'pose? I wouldn't have that. I don't
mind the Sooprintendent; but I'd be dead before I'd be bossed by a
woman, see? Say, what fam'ly did you say you was with?"

The stream of talk had acted like a nerve-tonic on L