for a man to get another as good as this at this time
of year. See the home it gives you."

He looked proudly around the pleasant basement living-room. Open doors
led into the dining-room and hall from which more doors opened into
kitchen and sleeping-rooms. There was a small room at the end of the
hall in which Mrs. Donovan kept her sewing machine but for which, in
the last twenty-four hours, she had found another use. The apartment
was very comfortable and Mrs. Donovan kept it as neat as wax. There
was never any dust on her floors if the fault-finding tenants did say
there was in the halls.

Mrs. Donovan was proud of her home also, but she frowned as she glanced
about her. "There's plenty of room for one more," she grumbled. "That
little room beyond ours is just the place for a child. But go on,
Larry, we'll think of a way. We've got to! It shan't ever be said
that Kate Donovan turned away her only sister's only child. Do you
mind when Mary married Sam Crocker? It was thought to be a big step up
for the daughter of an Irish carpenter to marry a Crocker, the son of
ol' Judge Crocker an' a lawyer himself. Seems if there never was a
prettier girl than Mary an' she was happy till she died. An' now Sam's
dead, too. He wasn't the man his father was. He couldn't keep money
an' he couldn't earn it. Mary used to feel sorry for me, Larry,
because you weren't a Crocker, but if she could see us now an', seems
if, I believe she can, she mus' be glad I got a good honest hard
workin' Irishman. You've a good job an' a little money in the bank.
You don't owe no man a penny. That's more'n Sam Crocker could ever say
an' tell the truth!"

For two years Larry Donovan had been the proud janitor of the
Washington Apartment House. He had moved in before the building was
fairly completed and felt that it belonged to him quite as much as to
the owner, whose name he did not know, for all business was transacted
through the rental agents, Brown and Lawson.

It was an attractive building. The center of the red brick front, with
its rather ornate entrance, was pushed back some ten feet. The
rectangular space that was left was neatly bisected by the cement walk.
On either side were grassy squares, like pocket handkerchiefs, man's
size, with clumps of shrubbery in the corners for monograms. The
Washington was long and broad and low, not more than three stories
high, but it had an air of comfort and also of pretension that