“If you want a room, or any thing of that sort, I may as well out with it, and say that it can’t be had,” cried that female, standing up resolutely with the knife in her hand. “It don’t set easy on my conscience letting in that other chap. There’s something mean and underhanded about his coming here, or I don’t know good from bad. The fact is, I offered him his money back, and would a put up with the loss; but he said he had got friends in the house, and couldn’t think of it. This riled me more than any thing, for I had a liking for that old woman and the girl, to say nothing of the little boys, that are worth their weight in gold, going up and down stairs chattering and laughing so bright; and I told him it was a shame to come here just to unsettle a poor young cretur’s head that had got trouble enough already. At which he laughed and hitched up his shoulders, and woke up my temper till I could a boxed his ears, and gloried over it like sixty, if it hadn’t been for the law, which makes sich things salt and battery, and six months in the penitentiary; which I shouldn’t like, being respectable, and working for one of the best clothing houses in the city, besides hiring this house on speculation; and a purty speculation it’s been, one month in advance, and then three dunning for—and obliged to turn ’em out at last; except that family in the top, I never dunned them, poor creturs! and wouldn’t anyhow, knowing that they would starve rather than not pay, if they had it. Poor girl! Poor girl! I feel as if I’d helped to hunt her down, somehow, and it sets hard here.” The woman placed her hand, knife and all, against her right side, solemnly impressed with an idea that her heart lay in that direction; and a heavy sigh was lost in the hissing which rose from the frying-pan. “No, no! I’ll have nothing to do with tenants that come here with kid gloves and coral studs in their bosom. It isn’t for me, a hard-working woman, to put temptation in the way of my own sect. So, if You’d just as lieve, I’d rather you wouldn’t come here no more. I’ve seen you more an once going up to the top of the house, and it kinder made the heart ache in my bosom.” Savage listened to all this with an aching heart and changing countenance. The coarse, hard honesty of the woman enforced his respect; and he stood with his hat off gazing upon her with strange interest. “It is not likely that I ever shall come again,” he said, with a pang at his heart, laying his hand on the door-knob. “It was that live-folks picture that did it,” said the woman; “afore that time no living creature ever went to see them. Now it is ladies in their flounces and with lace parasols; and gentlemen in broadcloth, cutting up and down all the time. I wish they’d a let the poor soul alone.”