Walter acknowledged that he did not mean to stop the stage; he wanted Athalia to go to Taylor's, and take an ice cream with him. But she was inexorable. He plead, she said, no; she said it sweetly, and, finally, they compromised by her agreeing to go to-morrow evening. The second false step! Then he walked home with her. She said, good night, at the door, he said, "Oh, let me see you up these dim stairs." "Oh, no, I am used to them, I can find my room in the dark. If Jeannette is at home, she will hear a little signal upon the wall, and open the door, then it will be light." "Give it then." She did; Jeannette was not at home. "Oh, let me go up, and just look in, and see where angels live." Oh, flattery! thy power is great. Why should she refuse, since he was to come again, she had promised that? So she said, "come up, then," and away she tripped into the darkness, her step so light that he could not tell where it fell. Directly there was a little scratch, a flash, a blue flame, very small, and then a full white light, and a match, and then a lamp was burning. "Come up. Take care of the narrow, crooked steps, they are not like your broad easy stair-case." She had made another false step. Did far off visions of fancy revel in her brain, that she might some day go up that broad stair-case, arm in arm with that handsome young man? What if they did? you too have dreamed more unlikely day dreams. "Come up, can you see?" Yes, he could see, "By the lamp dimly burning," just up there above him, one of the houris he had often read of, often dreamed of, never before seen. He went up, to her little heaven of a room. How could she sing that, "Commerce wears an ugly frown," while everything looked so smiling in her mart? How could she long for the sweet seclusion of her country home, with such a bijou of a hermit's cell here? He stood amazed. He spoke not, but he thought. Did she divine his thoughts?--she answered them--how did she know them? The magnetic telegraph of the soul was at work. "Yes, sir, we are obliged to keep our room neat, because ladies come here to get work done, and they would not give us their custom if we lived in a plain room." Plain room! What would his sisters say to a plainly furnished room, if that was not one? "True, it is plainer than theirs--I mean--but you did not speak--I thought you spoke--yes it is plain compared with rooms that ladies occupy. We pay enough though for the furniture to have good." "Do you hire it then?" "Yes, we neither of us had money enough to furnish a room, only a few things, and pay the rent in advance. So we hired a furniture man to put in the things, and we pay him for the use of them." "How much?" "Five dollars a month." "Five dollars! Why there is not over a hundred dollars worth."