can look at another woman; looked at her gray and
withered curls, and at her face, which had never, in the spring-time
of Miss Slopham's youth, been the kind of face which painters
celebrate and poets embalm in verse, and said nothing. What she may
have thought, or whether she thought anything, was a matter of little
consequence, for when the richer lady came to mention the terms at
which she rated the hospitality of the Doherty household, Mrs. Doherty
showed a positive anxiety to oblige her, and even murmured something
about being glad to do anything in their power for such a kind lady.

Now began a week of agony for Miss Slopham. Ogla-Moga was duly
installed in the Doherty apartment, and duly invested with a suit of
Mr. Doherty's clothes. But the taste for roving was still strong upon
him. The inner life of an apartment-house seemed to arouse all his
savage curiosity, and the fact that the entrance to every apartment
looked like the entrance to every other apartment gave rise to some
disagreeable complications. In the second floor front, for example, a
skirmish with a view to matrimony had long been in progress between
the daughter of the family, Miss Josephine Ayr, and Mr. Margent, of
the young and prosperous stock-broking firm of Margent & Bar, and the
decisive engagement was plainly near at hand. The progress of the
acquaintanceship had been watched with an interest not altogether
friendly by the second floor back, while Miss Slopham had deigned to
catch such neutral and impartial glimpses of it as she could over the
stairs from the third floor front. In fact, the second floor back, who
bore the name of Pound, had in an unguarded moment introduced Mr.
Margent to the second floor front, and had then in silent rage seen
him borne away from them by Miss Josephine. Perhaps this was to be
accounted for by the fact that the two marriageable daughters in the
second floor back had been offered, to use the coarse expression of
the young stock-broker, "with no takers" for a series of years, and
perhaps by the bold and shocking manners of Miss Josephine, which were
often the subject of remark in the Pound household, where the opinion
was frequently heard that it was difficult to understand how old Mrs.
Ayr could keep so cheerful with a daughter whose behavior was the
scandal of all her acquaintances. By one of those unaccountable
coincidences which will occur in apartment-houses, the remarks of the
Ayrs about the Pounds were