Clara looked embarrassed. “Don’t you want to come look at the hat-rack?” she asked. “It’ll set your front room off fine!” The McGibneys pinched each other’s arms, as if saying, “Oh, Lord, preserve us!” All three went down the street toward Ninth Avenue, Clara preferring one side of the street; then, thinking the other side was darker, choosing the darker side so that if they should meet “him” he might not recognize them. Torches on wagons, wagonloads of oranges, twenty for twenty-five cents; pairs of rabbits slung on headless barrels, plump rabbits hanging outside, furry rags, shot to pieces, inside the barrels; piles of soup greens and mounds of cabbages; cries of “Everything cheap! Only a few more left!” Paddy’s Market! Then the second-hand furniture store, with bed springs and pillows outside it; stoves with covers and legs in the ovens; rolls of matting; everything second-hand, even crockery and tea-kettles. Clara went into the store, Mrs. McGibney having paused to dig a thumb-nail into potatoes to see whether they were frozen, McGibney lingering with her, because he would have to carry the potatoes. Clara came back to the sidewalk. Again her eyes were unseeing. “The hat-rack,” said Clara, staring at nothing visible, “is sold. I ain’t been gone from here ten minutes. It’s sold. Everything I got my heart on is sold. I don’t know who’s doing it, but they’ll never have a day’s luck for it.” “But what could I do, lady?” The furniture man came cringing out to her. “You know you didn’t leave no deposit. Would you like to look at some mats for your front hall? You didn’t leave no deposit, so what could I do? I got a very heavy, rich and elegant mat here for your front hall; though the number of a house is onto it.” “Look here, Jack,” said McGibney. “Who’s buying up all the things this lady looks at? Is it any particular party?” “Come to think of it, it is,” answered the furniture man. “He’s the gent took the unfurnished rooms upstairs. ‘What’s he look like?’ Well, he bows most polite every time my wife waits on him and I see his head was some bald——” “Wait for me!” said Clara. “Up on the next floor, you say? Just only wait one minute for me, Mrs. McGibney, and I’ll only go to tell him what I think of this latest meanness he’s playing me. Then I’ll be through with him forever. This is the last trick he’ll play me!” And she went to the stairs leading to the rooms over the store. “It must be Tommy,” said McGibney. “And I always took him for such a perfect little gentleman,” was Mrs. McGibney’s comment. “Just wait a minute!” Clara had said; but, after several minutes, McGibney became uneasy. “I’ll go up and see,” he said. “It maybe ain’t Tommy, and Clara may start mixing it with some stranger that’s got as much right to the furniture as her.” But it was Tommy, for, as the McGibneys went up the stairs, Clara’s words, plainly audible, told them so.