The Cliff-Dwellers | Page 6

by an accurate parting in the middle. He had the beginnings of a shadowy little moustache, and a pair of good eyes which expressed a fair amount of self-reliance and any amount of hope.
"And how are you finding the West Side?" Walworth pursued. "I don't know much about it myself. This is a big town and awfully cut up. A man has to pick out his own quarter and stick to it. If you move from one side of the river to another, you bid good-by to all your old friends; you never see them again. You said you were somewhere near Union Park, I be lieve?"
"Yes," George Ogden answered, "I have land ed in a pretty good place, and I want to stay there if I can. They're a sort of farming people or were, to start with. They came from New York State, I believe, and haven't been here but a year or two. Is there anybody in this t&wn who hasn't come from somewhere else, or who has been here more than a year or two?
Walworth laughed, "I haven't. But you go around some, and you may find a few that have."
"The mother cooks, the father markets, the daughter helps to wait on table. Nice, friendly people; make me think of those at home." He smiled a little wistfully. "About the only peo ple so far that do."
"Well, I have heard that there are some pret ty good streets over there," is Wai worth's vague response.
"Ours is. We have trees all of one sort and planted regularly, I mean. And ornamental lamp -posts. And I'm only a block from the Park. Everything seems all right enough."
"I dare say; but don't you find it rather far away from?" queried Floyd, with a sort of in sinuating intentness.
However, I have no idea of reproducing Waiworth's remarks on the local topography. They were voluminous, but he would be found prej udiced and but partly informed. Besides, his little tirade was presently thrown out of joint by a dislocating interruption.
Walworth always experienced a mental dislo cation, slight or serious, whenever his wife called at the office. Nor were matters much helped when his wife was accompanied by her sister. It was the latter of these who now opened the door with an assured hand and who shut it after the two of them with a confirmatory slam.
"Yes, here we are," she seemed to imply.
In Mrs. Walworth Floyd our young man met a lean and anxious little body, who appeared strenuous and exacting and of the kind "who, as the expression goes, are hard to get along with. She had a sharp little nose and a pair of inquis itorial eyes. She was dressed richly, but as simply as a sword in its scabbard. If Wai worth spent an evening abroad it was a fair assumption that his wife knew where he was and all about it. Otherwise the sword was drawn.
"We have been almost three quarters of an hour getting here," she said in a tense way. "Something was the matter with the cable and they kept us in the tunnel nearly twenty min utes. As I tell Ann, you can always count on that sort of thing when you've got anything of real importance on hand and not much time for it. Aitd yet we talk about the jams and delays in Tremont Street!"
She drew down her mouth and blinked her eyes indignantly. She felt all the shortcomings of her new home very keenly; she made every one of them a personal affront.
"Ann thought it was amusing. Perhaps it won't seem so after it has happened to her three or four times more.
Walworth glanced apprehensively in the di rection of his sister-in-law's chair. She was un derstood to be in his house on a brief visit. He trusted that she was not to be exposed a second time to so annoying an accident.
Ann Wilde was a stout woman who was nearing forty. Her appearance indicated that, while she had not escaped the buffets of the world, yet her past experiences had only seasoned and toughened her for her future ones. In this earth ly turmoil of give and take she seemed to have played a full inning on each side. She had be gun as a poetess, she had gone on as a boardinghouse keeper, and she was now ready to take her first step as an investor. To turn from liter ature to lodgings indicates talent; to do so well in lodgings as to have funds for the purchase of property indicates genius. Miss "Wilde, at four teen, was a plain child whose straggling hair was drawn back from her forehead by an indiarubber comb that passed over the top of her head from ear to ear, and she