“Any thing stirring?” she inquired, pressing the needle through a thick double-seam with the side of her steel thimble. “A good deal of going up and down stairs lately—tramp, tramp! nothing but tramp! Getting to have lots of genteel company in your story? Silks a rustling, and patent-leather boots a cracking all the day long. How’s Anna?” “She is not very well. We are in a little trouble just now, and that’s what brings me here. I think we shall have to move.” “Move! Mrs. Burns! Has it come to that? These premises ain’t genteel enough for you, I dare say. It’s all that girl’s doings, I’ll bet. Expected it from the minute that young fellow came into the house! Scamp!” “That is the reason we must go. We haven’t had a happy minute since he came here.” “Then you want to get away from him—is that it?” cried the landlady, fixing her greenish-gray eyes on the sad face turned so innocently toward her. “Yes; that is the only reason we wish to go. People will think something wrong of it if a man who dresses so well, and spends so much money, is seen often with a girl like my Anna. And he will insist on walking by her if she goes out. She came home crying only a few minutes ago, because he stopped her in the street.” “Scamp!” exclaimed the landlady, jerking her needle out with snappish vigor. “Deserves to be kicked into the middle of next week!” “I have just been to his room.” The landlady dropped the heavy work down into her lap, overcome with astonishment. “You?” “I asked him to go away; told him how much we had become attached to the rooms; how hard it would be for us to break up—but it did no good.” “He wouldn’t go himself, and having received two months’ rent in advance, I can’t make him. There’s the worst of it, or he’d go out neck and heels, quicker than you ever saw a fellow go down stairs in all your born days, Mrs. Burns.” The landlady thrust her needle in and out so vigorously as she spoke, that it plunged into her thumb at the termination of this sentence. “Serves me right!” she said, thrusting her thumb into her mouth. “Serves me right, for letting the stuck-up creature in. But I’ll make the house too hot for him; see if I don’t—boil cabbage and fry onions every day of my life, with the fireboard up and the door open. Just as like as not his night-key won’t fit some day when he wants to come in. Will have the lock changed as sure as I live. I’ve offered the fellow his money back, and he won’t take it. Well, we’ll see. But you’re not going away, Mrs. Burns; rather than that I’ll go in and out with Anna myself. Owe her that much for thinking she could like the fellow. I’d like to see him, or anybody else, speak to her when I’m on hand. Standing down by the door to look at her feet as she goes up stairs. I’ve seen him do it. If he wants to look at anybody’s feet, let him look at mine.” “I am afraid we must move,” said Mrs. Burns, sadly enough. “You have been so kind to us, it seems almost like a funeral to go away.”