“Mamma ain’t home to-day,” she returns quickly. “Mamma?” I reply. “Why do you say that? I don’t want your mamma. I live here.” “Oh, I thought you was the insurance man,” she adds, grinning. “You look just like him.” “Aren’t you the coal man’s little girl?” “Yes.” “Well, he just went into the saloon over there.” “Huh-uh. Mine’s upstairs, drunk. He must be Mr. Kelly,” and she goes quickly on with her bucket. * * * * * I am sitting in my room one night, listening to the sounds that float vaguely about this curious little unit of metropolitan life, when a dénouement in the social complications of this same coal-heaver’s life is reached. I already know him now to be a rough man, for once or twice I heard him damning his children very loudly. But I did not suspect that there were likely to be complications over and above the world of the purely material. “Die frau hat sich selbst umgebracht!” (“The woman has taken her life!”) I hear some one crying out in the hall, and then there is such a running and shuffling in the general hubbub. A score of tenants from the different floors are talking and gesticulating, and in the rear of the hall the door opening into the coal-heaver’s dining-room is open. My landlady, Mrs. Witty, is on the scene, and even while we gaze a dapper little physician of the region, in a high hat and frockcoat, comes running up the steps and enters the open door in the rear. “The doctor! The doctor!” The word passes from one to another. “What is it?” I ask, questioning a little girl whom I had often seen playing tag on the sidewalk below. “She took poison,” she answers. “Who?” “That woman in there.” “The wife of the coal man?” “Sure.” “What did she take it for?” “I dunno. Here comes another doctor--look!” Another young doctor is hurrying up the steps. While we are still gaping at the opening and closing door, Mrs. Schmick, the little German woman who sang for me, comes out. She has evidently been laboring in the sick room and seems very much excited. “Is she dead?” ask a half-dozen people as she hurries upstairs for something. “No-oh,” she answers, puckering up her mouth in her peculiar way. “She is very low, though. I must get some things,” and she hurries away. The crowd waits, and finally some light on the difficulty begins to break. “She wouldn’t live with him if he didn’t stop going with her,” my own landlady is saying. “I heard her say it.” “Who? Who?” inquires another. “Why, that woman in Fortieth Street. You know her.” “No.” “Yes, you do. She lives next door to the blacksmith’s shop, upstairs there, the woman with the two little girls.” “Her? Is that why she did it?” “Sure.” “You don’t say!”