"That's a concrete front. Neat, ain't it? That's a mosaic-floor porch, too, I built on a year after her and her mother vamoosed." "It's a beau-tiful house, Jerry." "You're the land of a kid that knows how to appreciate a home when she gets it. But her with her she-devil of a mother, they no sooner got in than they began to side with each other against me--her and her old mother trying to learn me how to run my own shebang." "Where--" "Gad! they're living in a dirty Harlem flat now and tryin' to put it over on me that they're better off in it. Bah! if I had to double up on alimony, I wouldn't give her a smell at this house, not a smell." "Say, but ain't it pretty, Jerry, right up over the river, and country all around, and right over there in back the street-cars for the city when you want them?" "This is going to be your street-car, Peachy, a six-cylinder one." She colored like a wild rose. "Oh, Jerry, I--I keep forgetting." "By Gad! it's a good thing I'm going to give up my city rooms and come out here to watch my p's and q's. Gosh darn her neck! I told her to quit cluttering up that side-yard turf with her gosh darn little flower-beds! Gosh darn her neck! There never was a servant worth her hide." "Jerry, why, they're beautiful! They just look beautiful, those pansies, and is that the little girl sitting up there on the porch steps? Is--is that Maisie?" They drew to a stop before the box-shaped ornate house, its rough concrete front pretentiously inlaid over the doors and windows with a design of pebbles stuck like dates on a cake, and perched primly on the topmost step of the square veranda the inert figure of a small girl. "Aw, ain't she cute?" Miss Barnet sprang lightly to the sidewalk, and beside her Mr. Jerome Beck flecked the dust of travel from the bay of his waistcoat, shaking his trousers knees into place. "This has got your Twenty-third Street dump beat a mile, and then some, 'ain't it, Peachy?" "Jerry, call her here, the little girl. You tell her who--who I am. Tell her gently, Jerry, and--and how good I'm going to be to her and--Aw, ain't I the silly, though, to feel so trembly?" The child on the step regarded their approach with unsmiling eyes, nor did she move except to draw aside her dark stuff skirts and close her knees until they touched. "Hello there! Moping again, eh? Get up! Didn't I tell you not to let me catch you not out playing or helping Cloonan around? Say howdy to this lady. She's coming out here to live. Come here and say howdy to her." The child shrank to the newel-post, her narrow little face overtaken with an agony of shyness. "Cat got your tongue? Say howdy. Quit breathing through your mouth like a fish. Say howdy, that's a good girl." "Don't force her, Jerry. She's bashful. Ain't you, dearie? Ain't you, Maisie?"