Her lodging-house stood on a corner; she had a back, corner room on the third floor. The house next door, on the side street, finished to the rear in a two-story shed. Its roof lay almost under her window. The landlady, upon showing the room, had called her attention to this shed. "We've got no regular fire escapes, dearie," she said, "but in case of trouble, you're all right. You just step out here and if the skylight ain't open, somebody'll get you down with a ladder. A person can't be too careful about fires!" Across the skylight lay a few scanty backyards--treeless, grassless, uninteresting. This city area of yards and sheds seemed to be the club, the Rialto for all the stray cats of Eighth Avenue. Susannah named them, endowed them with personalities. Their squabbles, their amours, their melodramatic stalking, gave her a kind of apathetic interest. The interest lessened as three days went by, and the apathy deepened. "It's my state of mind, Glorious Lutie," she apprised the miniature. "It's this weight that's on my spirit. It's fear. Just as soon as I can get my mind off--I mean just as soon as I become convinced that I'm never going to be bothered again, it will go, I'm sure. Of course I can't help feeling as I do. But I ought not to. I'm perfectly safe now. In a few days those crooks won't trouble about me any more. It will be too late. And I know it." She reiterated those last two sentences as though Glorious Lutie were a difficult person to convince. The next morning, however, came diversion. Work--roofing--began on the shed just under her window. Susannah watched the workmen with an interest that held, at first, an element of determined concentration. The roofers, an elderly man and a younger one, incredibly dirty in their blackened overalls, which were soon matched by face and hands, were very conscious at first of the brilliant tawny head just above. Once, muffled by the window, she caught an allusion to white horses. But Susannah ignored this; continued to watch them disappearing and emerging through the open skylight, setting up their melting-pot, arranging their sheets of tin. Before she was out of bed next morning they were making a metallic clatter with their hammers. In her normal state, Susannah was a creature almost without nerves. She even retained a little of the child's enjoyment of a racket for its own sake. But now--the din annoyed her, annoyed her unspeakably. She crept languidly out of bed, peeped through the edge of the curtain. They were just beginning work. It would keep up all day. "I can't stand this!" said Susannah aloud; and then began one of her wordless addresses to the miniature. "I guess the time has come, anyhow, to strike into pastures new. Behold, Glorious Lutie, your Glorious Susie descending from the high and mighty position of pampered secretary to that of driven slave. Tomorrow morn I apply for a job as second girl. If it weren't for this headache, I'd do it today."