orking, her trouble was more likely a leak
somewhere in her piping.

"But all attempts to draw from the girl any clear idea of the symptoms
were unavailing. All she could tell me was that the cellar boiler
wouldn't work. Beyond that her answers were mere confusion. I gathered
enough, however, to feel sure that her main feed was still working, and
that her top story check valve was probably in order. With that I had to
be content.

"As a young practitioner, I had as yet no motor car. Simmons, however,
summoned me a taxi, into which I hurriedly placed the girl and my basket
of instruments, and was soon speeding in the direction she indicated. It
was a dark, lowering night, with flecks of rain against the windows of
the cab, and there was something in the lateness of the hour (it was now
after half-past eight) and the nature of my mission which gave me a
stimulating sense of adventure. The girl directed me, as I felt sure
she would, towards the capitalist quarter of the town. We had soon sped
away from the brightly lighted streets and tall apartment buildings
among which my usual practice lay, and entered the gloomy and
dilapidated section of the city where the unhappy capitalist class
reside. I need not remind those of you who know it that it is scarcely a
cheerful place to find oneself in after nightfall. The thick growth of
trees, the silent gloom of the ill-lighted houses, and the rank
undergrowth of shrubs give it an air of desolation, not to say danger.
It is certainly not the place that a professional man would choose to be
abroad in after dark. The inhabitants, living, so it is said, on their
scanty dividends and on such parts of their income as our taxation is
still unable to reach, are not people that one would care to fall in
with after nightfall.

"Since the time of which I speak we have done much to introduce a better
state of things. The opening of day schools of carpentry, plumbing and
calcimining for the children of the capitalist is already producing
results. Strange though it may seem, one of the most brilliant of our
boiler fitters of to-day was brought up haphazard in this very quarter
of the town and educated only by a French governess and a university
tutor. But at the time practically nothing had been done. The place was
infested with consumers, and there were still, so it was said, servants
living in some of the older houses. A butler had been caught one night
in a thick shrubbery beside one of t