It was on the front of the house and looked out into a quiet, shabby-genteel little street in which boarding-houses and small shops were indiscriminately mixed. But there were maple trees along the sidewalk and a good-sized yard at one side of the house, and, in summer, as he knew, for he had passed the house quite often on his way to school, beds of geraniums and coleus. The landlady was a grim-looking but kind-hearted elderly woman who supported a rather worthless husband. Mr. Tully was always, it seemed to Tom, looking for work and never finding it. He was a likable sort of little man, for all his failings, and he and Tom got to be good friends in the course of time. There were many roomers at Mrs. Tully’s and at dinner the long table held always a dozen or more boarders. The food was sufficient, but lacked what Tom called the “filling” qualities of Mrs. Burns’s viands. He often sighed for one of the latter woman’s beef stews with dumplings! At Mrs. Tully’s, if they had beef stew it was called something else and served in dishes so tiny that Tom mentally referred to them as “sample trays.” The other members of the household were mostly clerks, many of them employed at Miller and Tappen’s. There was one, however, Mr. George, who had a more fascinating occupation. He was a private detective in the employ of the railroad company, although Tom did not discover this fact, which was not generally known, until he had been at Mrs. Tully’s for a month. Then it was Mr. Tully who told him. Mr. Tully liked to come to Tom’s “third-floor-front” in the evenings when Tom was at home and, occupying the easy-chair, which he grumblingly declared was the only comfortable chair in the house, put his feet on the window-ledge and fill the room with the strong, acrid smoke of his big brown meerschaum pipe. Somehow Tom didn’t mind his presence in the least and could study quite as well when Mr. Tully was sitting there in silent meditation as when he was alone. Mr. Tully was very fond of talking, especially of Mr. Tully and the things he had done in his time, but he never interfered with Tom’s studies.