The Cliff-Dwellers | Page 6

perhaps twenty-four. His complexion was of the colorless kind that
good health alone keeps from sallowness. His hair was a light brown
and fine and thick, and it fell across his temples in the two smooth
wings that were made 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