No policeman passed, though great numbers of other people met them without apparently finding anything noticeable in the spectacle which their group presented. Among the crowds going and coming on the avenues which they crossed scarcely any turned to look at them, or was moved by the sense of anything odd in them. The old woman herself did nothing to attract public notice till they were midway between Seventh and Eighth avenues. She mumbled something from time to time which the colored girl interpreted to the rest as her continued wish to go home. She was now clearer about her street and number. The girl, as if after question of her own generous spirit, said she did not see how _she_ could go with her; she was expected at home herself. "Oh, you won't have to go with her; we'll just put her aboard the Ninth Avenue car," the father encouraged her. He would have encouraged any one; he was enjoying the whole affair. At a certain moment, for no apparent reason, the mother decided to sit down on a door-step. It proved to be the door-step of a house where from time to time colored people--sometimes of one sex, sometimes of another--went in or came out. The door seemed to open directly into a large room where dancing and dining were going on concurrently. At a long table colored people sat eating, and behind their chairs on both sides of the room and at the ends of the table colored couples were waltzing. The effect was the more curious because, except for some almost inaudible music, the scene passed in silence. Those who were eating were not visibly incommoded by those revolving at their backs; the waltzers turned softly around and around, untempted by the table now before them, now behind them. When some of the diners or dancers came out, they stumbled over the old woman on the door-step without minding or stopping to inquire. Those outside, when they went in, fell over her with like equanimity and joined the strange company within. The father murmured to himself the lines, "'Vast forms that move fantastically To a discordant melody--'" with a remote trouble of mind because the words were at once so graphic and yet so imperfectly applicable. The son and daughter exchanged a silent wonder as long as they could bear it; then the daughter asked the colored girl: "What is it?" "It's a boarding-house," the girl answered, simply. "Oh," the daughter said. Sounds of more decided character than before now came from the figure on the door-step. "She seems to be saying something," the daughter suggested in general terms. "What is she saying?" she asked the colored girl. The girl stooped over and listened. Then she answered, "She's swearing." "Swearing? What about? Whom is she swearing at?" "At me, I reckon. She says, why don't I take her home." "Well, why doesn't she get up, then?" "She says she won't." "We can't carry her to the car," the daughter noted. "Oh, why not?" the father merrily demanded.