Later she had taken up her residence with Mrs. Michael Fahey, who had consented to add to her precarious income by this means, and at the age of four she became the official nurse of Master John Sullivan Fahey. A terribly hot August, unlimited cold tea, and a habit of playing in the gutter in the noon glare proved too much for her charge, and he died on his third birthday. The ride to the funeral was the most exciting event of Ardelia’s life. For years she dated from it. Mrs. Fahey had so long regarded her as one of the family, that though her occupation was gone, and her board was no longer paid, she was whipped as regularly and cursed as comprehensively, in her foster-mother’s periodical sprees, as if they had been closely related. What time she could spare from helping Mrs. Fahey in her somewhat casual household labor, and running errands to tell that lady’s perennially hopeful employers that her mother wasn’t feeling well to-day, but would it do if she came to-morrow, Ardelia spent in playing up and down the street with a band of little girls, or, in the very hottest days, sitting drowsy and vindictive at the head of a flight of stone steps that led into a down-stairs saloon. The damp, flat, beer-sweetened air that rushed out as the men pushed open the swing-doors was cool and refreshing to her; she was in a position to observe any possible customers at the three push-carts in her line of vision, and could rouse a flagging interest in life by listening to any one of the altercations that resounded from the tenements night and day. Drays clattered incessantly over the pavement, peddlers shouted, sharp gongs punctuated the steadier din. A policeman was almost always in sight, and one of them, Mr. Halloran, had more than once given her a penny for lemonade. In the room above her head an Italian band practised every evening, and then Ardelia was perfectly happy, for she loved music. Often before the band began, a hurdy-gurdy would station itself at the corner, and Ardelia and the other little girls would dance about, singly and in pairs, shouting the tunes they knew, rejoicing in the comparative coolness and the generally care-free atmosphere. Ardelia was the lightest-footed of them all; her hands held her skirts out almost gracefully, her thin little legs flew highest. Sometimes the saloon-keeper—they called him “Old Dutchy”—would nod approval as Ardelia skipped and pranced, and beckon her to him mysteriously. “You trow your legs goot,” he would say. “We shall see you already dancing, no? Here is an olluf; eat her.” And Ardelia, who loved olives to distraction, would nibble off small, sour, salty mouthfuls and suck the pit luxuriously while she listened to the Italian band.