“That’s just like what Dicky Cobden would say,” he remarked, handing it back. “Send it along with the manuscript.” Pidge wasn’t allowed to forget Dicky Cobden, though Richard, himself, was across the world and remained across, apparently groping to find the exact antipodes from Washington Square, New York. Between Miss Claes’ affection for him and John Higgins’ and Nagar’s; considering her occasional use of his “parlor” in Harrow Street and her daily use of his old desk in the office, to say nothing of the position she occupied through his kindness and care--no, she wasn’t being allowed to forget. About the same time that Rufus Melton’s story came in to the office, a dingy bit of white paper came to Harrow Street for Pidge. It was like a paper you would see in the street around a public school building. Pidge was awed at the unfailing magic of the post-office authorities, that the letter had ever been delivered. It was from Fanny Gallup, who had married Albert and left the pasting table shortly after Pidge’s change of fortune. Pidge had seen Fanny but once in the meantime, but had asked her to write or telephone in case of need. Pidge found the hall designated in the third floor of a condemned building in Foley Street, and was directed to a door through which came the sounds of a crying child. Her knock was answered, and the caller gradually realized through the shadows that she was being grinned at. She smiled back, wondering if the shoeless creature were Fanny’s sister or mother. She wore no outer waist and a heavy plaid skirt that was splashed with wash water. An infant shrank into the hollow curve of her body, and another child sat wailing on the wet floor behind. “I thought you’d come, Musser.” It was Fanny herself. Pidge had crossed the threshold to look into eyes in which hate and hunger moved in a narrow orbit; narrow like the wet spot on the floor, in which the first-born played. Tired back, draggled hair, merely a stretched and faded vestige of a girl was Fanny Gallup now. Laugh and street talk were gone for the time, at least; gone as Albert, the barber, as much a myth as ever, so far as Pidge was concerned, though the place hypothecated a male parent. These three remaining seemed purposeless bits of life which a perverted scheme permitted to live on. Pidge hated herself for becoming involved in the complication. For the moment, she hated New York that could not keep itself clean. No rent, no food, somebody else’s washing in the tubs, and the rags of Fanny and her children unwashed. “... No, it ain’t no good to think of staying, Musser, because they’re tearing the buildin’ down.” “How much rent do you owe?” “Five weeks. But it ain’t no good to pay that, because I got to get out anyway. Gawd, Redhead, you look like a doll in a window!” “Is there any place around here where you can go?” “It’s hard to get in with the two, and you’d have to pay a month in advance,” Fanny said. “How soon do you have to leave here?”