“We can keep the windows open on this side,” said Mrs. Denton, “but the elevated makes too much noise in front. When we came here first, it was warm weather; it was stifling when we shut the windows, and when we opened them, it seemed as if the trains would drive us wild. It was like having them in the same room with us. But now it’s a little cooler, and we don’t need the front windows open; so it’s very pleasant.” Ray said it was delightful, and he asked, “Then you haven’t been in New York long?” “No; only since the beginning of September. We thought we would settle in New Jersey first, and we did take a house there, in the country; but it was too far from my husband’s work, and so we moved in. Father wants to meet people; he’s more in the current here.” As she talked, Mrs. Denton had a way of looking down at her apron, and smoothing it across her knees with one hand, and now and then glancing at Ray out of the corner of her eye, as if she were smiling on the further side of her face. “We went out there a little while ago to sell off the things we didn’t want to keep. The neighbors took them.” She began to laugh, and Ray laughed, too, when she said, “We found they had taken _some_ of them before we got there. They might as well have taken all, they paid us so little for the rest. I didn’t suppose there would be such a difference between first-hand and second-hand things. But it was the first time we had ever set up housekeeping for ourselves, and we had to make mistakes. We had always lived in a community.” She looked at him for the impression of this fact, and Ray merely said, “Yes; Mr. Kane told me something of the kind.” “It’s all very different in the world. I don’t know whether you’ve ever been in a community?” “No,” said Ray. “Well,” she went on, “we’ve had to get used to all sorts of things since we came out into the world. The very day we left the community, I heard some people in the seat just in front of me, in the car, planning how they should do something to get a living; it seemed ridiculous and dreadful. It fairly frightened me.” Ray was struck with the literary value of the fact. He said: “I suppose it would be startling if we could any of us realize it for the first time. But for most of us there never is any first time.” Mrs. Denton said: “No, but in the community we never had to think how we should get things to eat and wear, any more than how we should get air to breathe. You know father believes that the world can be made like the Family, in that, and everybody be sure of a living, if he is willing to work.” She glanced at Ray with another of her demure looks, which seemed inquiries both as to his knowledge of the facts and his opinion of them. “I didn’t know just what your father’s ideas were,” he said; and she went on: “Yes; he thinks all you’ve got to do is to have patience. But it seems to me you’ve got to have money too, or you’ll starve to death before your patience gives out.”