“Well,” she said, pressing the side of her steel thimble against the eye of her needle, as she took a vigorous stitch, “suited with the premises, or not? Would a gone up with you, only hadn’t time. Ten cents apiece for a blouse like this don’t give a woman many play spells.” “I like the room, and will pay two months’ rent in advance,” said Ward, taking out his porte-monnaie. “Then that’s settled,” answered the woman, nodding her head as he laid the money down. “Good-day! Good-day!” CHAPTER XII. AN ECCENTRIC DRIVE. Miss Eliza Halstead was very eccentric in her drive about town that day. She had some shopping to do, but forgot it entirely, for the first time in her life. Miss Eliza had a taste for that especial amusement; and it must have been an absorbing passion that could have drawn it from her mind. As it was, Chestnut street saw but little of the Halstead carriage that day; but it appeared in parts of the town where such equipages seldom presented themselves; threaded cross-streets, and drove slowly by tenement-houses, astonishing the children that played on the doorsteps, and chased each other along the unswept side-walks. Once or twice Miss Eliza left her carriage and examined the numbers of these houses herself, rather than trust the coachman to leave his horses. This singular conduct disturbed the serenity of this high potentate, who muttered his indignation to the air, and lashed little boys with his whip, as if they had been to blame for bringing him into a neighborhood which revolted every aristocratic sense of his nature. Miss Eliza, too, held up her skirts as she crossed the pavements, and threaded the side-walks with an air of infinite disdain; but comforted herself by reflecting that the people who saw her would believe that some noble purpose of charity had brought her there; and, to strengthen this idea, she took a showy porte-monnaie from her pocket, and tangled its gold chain in her gloved fingers, which was suggestive of unbounded benevolence searching in the highways and hedges for objects of charity. Miss Eliza was a good deal puzzled by all the numbers, which she found contradicting each other along the battered doors, and was about to abandon the exploration, when she saw a young man leave one of the houses, and walk down the block, as if in haste to leave the neighborhood. “That is young Ward, I’ll stake any thing,” said Miss Eliza, leaning out of the carriage she had just entered. “What on earth can he be doing there?” Young Ward did not notice her, but turned a corner and disappeared; but Eliza had taken a correct survey of the house, and ordering the coachman to drive slowly by it, took the number in her memory.