They sat in an almost empty downtown subway train, their bundles about them, the stops called by the guard. They both hunched a little, when the stop nearest Lot & Company’s was called, but did not speak. Farther and farther downtown--the last passengers leaving. It was the hour the crowds move upward. Strange deep moments for Bellair--moments in which this was more than Davy sitting beside him. This was Boy--Davy Acton but the symbol of a great need. 6 A hurried walk to the east with their bundles to a quarter that Bellair had not known before, past the great stretches of massive buildings which the day had abandoned, to a low and older sort that carried on a night-life of their own, where children cried, halls were narrow, and the warmth became heaviness.... A plump little woman who had not lost hope (she did not see the stranger at first because the boy filled her eyes); a dark, second-floor hall, a little room with a lamp and a red table-cloth; a door at either end, and opposite the door they entered, one window.... How bewildered she was with the bundles, desiring to prepare something for them right away. Indeed, it would have helped her to be active in their behalf.... Bellair was smiling. Davy told part and Bellair part. Presently all was forgotten in the presence of the calamity that had befallen. It was slow to change her mind about Lot & Company. Davy had impressed upon her for two years the lessons administered there. Not to be changed in a moment, this estimate--that before all poverty, before all need, and above all hope, a place at Lot & Company’s was a permanent place, “if a fellow did his part”--that Lot & Company was an honest house. Davy told of the paper Mr. Bellair had forced from them, and Bellair touched upon the life he had led in those halls, just a little and with haste. To help him to speak authoritatively, he added that he would help Davy to another position.... Then he looked around, and glanced at his watch. There was a small anteroom which they occupied.... Bellair had asked about the other door. “An empty room,” Mrs. Acton told him. Of course it was for rent. On the spur of the moment, he declared he would take it, asked her to rent it for him, insisting on paying in advance. He would come in the morning--have his things brought later.... No, Davy was not to look for a position to-morrow. Davy must devote himself to him to-morrow. He left them happily. The mother called after him in hopeless excitement that he had left enough to rent the room all summer.