autumn day) threw its flare on an uneven cedar-block pavement, worn into ruts and holes that had given up, hopeless of repair, to mud and filth; on obscure little tailor shops and masquerade-costume shops, and dirty tobacco shops with windows hung full of questionable prints; on an itinerant popcorn-and-peanut man, who had stationed his glass-enclosed cart on the corner and was himself sitting on the curbstone, the picture of disgust with life; on a prosperous red-brick corner building, that shed light and comfort from half a dozen broad windows, announcing itself by its curtained inner door and its black-and-gilt signs to be Hoffman's sample room. So much for the neighbourhood. Within the tenement, up three flights of stairs, was an apartment of two rooms where lived Mrs. Craig with her daughter and her son, who bore the name of Bigelow.Lizzie was sewing: her mother, back home for supper in the intermission between the work of afternoon and evening, was taking off her hat.

“Is the fire going, Lizzie?”

The girl shook her head without looking up. 

“How did I know you were coming home so early?”

“It is six o'clock.”

“Well, how do you suppose I'm ever going to get my work done if I have to make fires for you? Where's George, I'd like to know! That's his business, anyway.”

Mrs. Craig, herself wondering where George was, went to the next room and built the fire herself.

A few moments later Halloran knocked at the door, and Miss Davies and he were admitted. And while Miss Davies was opening the subject, trying with the utmost delicacy to obtain the confidence of this woman, trying to show by simple, honest words how sincerely she and Halloran were interested in George, another boy, a small, wizened-faced boy with thin legs, was hiding in a doorway across the street, watching with keen little eyes for their exit and pondering with a keen little mind on their probably next move.

Miss Davies was beginning to wonder if she had not overestimated the difficulty of talking with Mrs. Craig. Or was it the present topic that made it a little easier? For she had come now with no offers of food, or coal for the fires; but only to talk about George, to see if she and the young man with her might not, by giving their time and interest, make the search easier. And the main difficulty seemed now to be that the woman knew no more about it than they did.

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