IT was a chill day early in January, and at four in the afternoon a gray sky shut in the city, like the cylindrical background of a cyclorama. Now and then a wreath of steam chalked itself on the slate-colored horizon; and across the river, far over to the westward, there was a splash of pink, sole evidence of the existence of the sun, which no one had seen for twenty-four hours.

As Miss Marlenspuyk turned the corner of the side street she stood still for a moment, looking down on the long Riverside Drive and on the mighty Hudson below, flowing sluggishly beneath its shield of ice. She had long passed the limit of threescore years and ten, and she had been an indefatigable traveller; and as she gazed, absorbing the noble beauty of the splendid scene, unsurpassable in any other city she had ever visited, she was glad that she was a New-Yorker born and bred, and that it was her privilege to dwell where a vision like this was to be had for the asking. But while she looked lovingly up and down the solemn stream the wind sprang up again, and fluttered her gray curls and blew her wrappings about her.

Two doors above the corner where Miss Marlenspuyk was standing a striped awning stretched its convolutions across the sidewalk and up the irregular stone steps, and thrust itself into the door-way at the top of the stoop. A pretty young girl, with a pleasantly plump figure and with a dash of gold in her fair hair, passed through this twisting canvas tunnel just ahead of Miss Marlenspuyk; and when the door of the house was opened to admit them they entered together, the old maid and the young girl.

The house was illuminated as though it were already night; the curtains were drawn, and the lamps, with their fantastically extravagant shades of fringed silk, were all alight. The atmosphere was heavy with the perfume of flowers, which were banked up high on the mantel-pieces and the tables, while thick festoons of smilax were pendent from all the gas-fixtures and over all the mirrors. Palms stood in the corners and in the fireplaces; and at one end of the hall they were massed as a screen, through which glimpses could be caught of the bright uniforms of the Hungarian band.

In the front parlor, before a broad table on which there were a dozen or more beautiful bouquets tied with bows of ribbon, and under a bower of solid ropes of smilax, stood the lady of the house with the daughter she was that afternoon introducing to society. The hostess was a handsome, kindly woman, with scarce a gray hair in her thick dark braids. The daughter was, like her mother, kindly also, and also handsome; she was better looking, really, than any of the six or seven pretty girls she had asked to aid her in receiving her mother's friends and acquaintances.

The young woman who had preceded Miss Marlenspuyk into the house happened also to precede her in entering the parlor. The hostess, holding her bunch of orchids in the left hand, greeted the girl pleasantly, but perhaps with a vague hint of condescension.

"Miss Peters, isn't it?" said the lady of the house, pitching her voice low, but with an effort, as though the habit had been acquired late in life. "So good of you to come on such a nasty day. Mildred, you know Miss Peters?"

Then the daughter stepped forward and smiled and shook hands with Miss Peters, thus leaving the mother at liberty to greet Miss Marlenspuyk; and this time there was no trace of condescension in her manner, but rather a faint suggestion of satisfaction.

"Oh, Miss Marlenspuyk," she said, cordially, "this is a pleasure. So good of you to come on such a nasty day."

"It did blow as I came to the top of your hill here," Miss Marlenspuyk returned, "and I'm not as strong as I was once upon a time. I suppose that few of us are as frisky at seventy-five as we were at seventeen."

"I protest," said the hostess; "you don't look a day older now than when I first met you."

"That's not so very long ago," the old maid answered. "I don't think I've known you more than five or ten years, have I? And five or ten years are nothing to me now. I don't feel any older than I did half a century ago; but as for my looks—well, the least said about them is soonest mended. I never was a good-looker, you know."

"How can you say so?" responded the hostess, absently noting a group of new-comers gathering in the door-way. "Mildred, you know Miss Marlenspuyk?"

"Oh yes, indeed I do," the girl said, heartily, shaking hands with the vivacious old maid.

The young woman with the touch of gold in her light hair was still standing by Mildred's side. Noting this, and seeing the group of new-comers breaking from the door-way and coming towards her, the hostess spoke hastily again.

"Do you know Miss Peters, Miss Marlenspuyk?" she asked. "Well, at all events, Miss Peters ought to know you."

Then she had just time to greet the group of new-comers and to lower her voice again, and to tell them it was so good of them to come on such a nasty day.

The daughter was left talking to Miss Marlenspuyk and Miss Peters, but within a minute her mother called her—"Mildred, you know Mrs. Hitchcock?"

As the group of new-comers pressed forward the old maid with the bright blue eyes, and the young woman with the pleasantly plump figure, fell back a little.

"I've heard so much of you, Miss Marlenspuyk, from my grandfather," began the younger woman.

"Your grandfather!" echoed the elder lady. "Then your father must be a son of Bishop Peters?"

Little Miss Peters nodded.

"Then your grandfather was a great friend of my younger brother's," Miss Marlenspuyk continued. "They went to school together. I remember the first time I saw the Bishop—it must be sixty years ago—it was the day he was put into trousers for the first time! And wasn't he proud of them!"

Miss Peters joined Miss Marlenspuyk in laughing at this amusing memory.

Then the old maid asked, "Your father married in the South after the war, didn't he? Wasn't your mother from Atlanta?"

"He lived there till mother died; I was bo'n there," said the girl. "I've been No'th only two years now this Christmas."

"I don't suppose you found many of your grandfather's friends left. Nowadays people die so absurdly young," the old maid remarked. "Is your father here this afternoon?"

"Oh dear no," responded Miss Peters; "he has to live in Southe'n Califo'nia for his health. I'm in New Yo'k all alone."

"I'm sorry for you, my child," said the elder woman, taking the girl's hand. "I've been alone myself a great deal, and I know what it means. But you must do as I did—make friends with yourself, and cultivate a liking for your own society."

The younger woman laughed lightly, and answered, "But I haven't as cha'ming a companion as you had."

Miss Marlenspuyk smiled back. "Yes, you have, my child. I'm not an ill-looking old woman now, I know, but I was a very plain girl; and I know it isn't good for any one's character to be conscious that she's almost ugly. But I set out to make the best of it, and I did. I thought it likely I should have a good deal of my own society, and so I made friends with this forced acquaintance. Now, I'm very good company for myself. I'm rarely dull, for I find myself an amusing companion, and we have lots of interests in common. And if you choose you can also cultivate a friendship for yourself. But it won't be as necessary for you as for me, because you are a pretty girl, you see. That glint of gold in your fair hair is really very fetching. And what are you doing here in New York all alone?"

"I'm writing," Miss Peters replied.

"Writing?" echoed Miss Marlenspuyk.

"My father's in ve'y bad health, as I told you," the younger woman explained, "and I have to suppo't myself. So I write."

"But I don't think I've seen anything signed Peters in the magazines, have I?" asked the old maid.

"Oh, the magazines!" Miss Peters returned—"the magazines! I'm not old enough to have anything in the magazines yet. You have to wait so long for them to publish an article, even if they do accept it. But I get things into the weeklies sometimes. The first time I have a piece printed that I think you'd like, I'll send it to you, if I may."

"I will read it at once and with pleasure," Miss Marlenspuyk declared, cordially.

"I don't sign my own name yet," continued Miss Peters; "I use a pen-name. So perhaps you have read something of mine without knowing it."

"Perhaps I have, my child," said Miss Marlenspuyk. "I shall be on the lookout for you now. It must be delightful to be able to put your thoughts down in black and white, and send them forth to help make the world brighter and better."

Little Miss Peters laughed again, disclosing a fascinating dimple.

"I don't believe I shall ever write anything that will make the world better," she said; "and if I did, I don't believe the editor would take it. I don't think that is just what editors are after nowadays—do you? They're on the lookout for stuff that'll sell the paper."

"Sad stuff it is, too, most of it," the old maid declared. "When I was a girl the newspapers were violent enough, and the editors abused each other like pickpockets, and sometimes they called each other out, and sometimes somebody else horsewhipped them. But the papers then weren't as silly and as cheap and as trivial as the papers are now. It seems as though the editors to-day had a profound contempt for their readers, and thought anything was good enough for them. Why, I had a letter from a newspaper last week—a printed form it was, too—stating that they were 'desirous of obtaining full and correct information on Society Matters, and would appreciate the kindness if Miss Marlenspuyk would forward to the Society Editor any information regarding entertainments she may purpose giving during the coming winter, and the Society Editor will also be happy to arrange for a full report when desired.' Was there ever such impudence? To ask me to describe my own dinners, and to give a list of my guests! As though any lady would do a thing like that!"

"There are ladies who do," ventured Miss Peters.

"Then they are not what you and I would call ladies, my child," returned Miss Marlenspuyk.

The face of the Southern girl flushed suddenly, and she bit her lip in embarrassment. Then she mustered up courage to ask, "I suppose you do not read the Daily Dial, Miss Marlenspuyk?"

"I tried it for a fortnight once," the old maid answered. "They told me it had the most news, and all that. But I had to give it up. Nobody that I knew ever died in the Dial. My friends all died in the Gotham Gazette."

"The Gazette has a larger family circulation," admitted the younger woman.

"Besides," Miss Marlenspuyk continued, "I could not stand the vulgarity of the Dial. I'm an old woman now, and I've seen a great deal of the world, but the Dial was too much for me. It seemed to be written down to the taste of the half-naked inhabitants of an African kraal."

"Oh," protested the other, "do you really think it is as bad as that?"

"Indeed I do," the old maid affirmed. "It's worse than that, because the poor negroes wouldn't know better. And what was most offensive, perhaps, in the Dial was the unwholesome knowingness of it."

"I see what you mean," said Miss Peters, and again the color rose in her cheeks.

"There was that Lightfoot divorce case," Miss Marlenspuyk went on. "The way the Dial dwelt on that was unspeakable. I'm willing to allow that Mrs. Lightfoot was not exactly a nice person; I'll admit that she may have been divorced more times than she had been married—"

"That's admitting a good deal!" said the young woman, as the elder paused.

"But it is going altogether too far to say that, like Cleopatra, she had the manners of a kitten and the morals of a cat—isn't it?"

Miss Peters made no response. Her eyes were fixed on the carpet, and her face was redder than ever.

"Of course it isn't likely you saw the article I mean," the old maid continued.

"Yes," the younger responded, "I saw it."

"I'm sorry for that," said Miss Marlenspuyk. "I may be old-fashioned—I suppose I must be at my age—but I don't think that is the kind of thing a nice girl like you should read."

Again Miss Peters made no response.

"I happen to remember that phrase," Miss Marlenspuyk continued, "because the article was signed 'Polly Perkins.' Very likely it was a man who wrote it, after all, but it may have been a woman. And if it was I felt ashamed for her as I read it. How could one woman write of another in that way?"

"Perhaps the writer was very poor," pleaded Miss Peters.

"That would not be a good reason, and it is a bad excuse," the old maid declared. "Of course I don't know what I should do if I were desperately poor—one never knows. But I think I'd live on cold water and a dry crust sooner than earn my bread and butter that way—wouldn't you?"

Miss Peters did not answer this direct question. For a moment she said nothing. Then she raised her head, and there was a hint of high resolve in the emphasis with which she said, "It is a mean way to make a living."

Before Miss Marlenspuyk could continue the conversation she was greeted by two ladies who had just arrived. Miss Peters drew back and stood by herself in a corner for a few minutes as the throng in front of her thickened. She was gazing straight before her, but she was not conscious of the people who encompassed her about. Then she aroused herself, and went into the dining-room and had a cup of tea and a thin slice of buttered bread, rolled up and tied with a tiny ribbon. And perhaps fifteen minutes later she found herself in front of the hostess.

She told the hostess that she had had such a very good time, that she didn't know when she had met such very agreeable people, and that she was specially delighted with an old friend of her grandfather's, Miss Marlenspuyk. "Such a very delightful old maid, with none of the flavor of desiccated spinsterhood. She does her own thinking, too. She gave me some of her ideas about modern journalism."

"She is a brilliant conversationalist," said the hostess. "You might have interviewed her."

"Oh, she talked freely enough," Miss Peters responded. "But I could never write her up properly. Besides, I'm thinking of giving up newspaper wo'k."

Three ladies here came towards the hostess, who stepped forward with extended hand, saying, "So good of you to come on such a nasty day." Miss Peters availed herself of the opportunity, and made her escape.

It might be half an hour afterwards when Miss Marlenspuyk, having had her cup of tea and her roll of bread-and-butter, returned to the front parlor in time to overhear a bashful young man take leave of the hostess, and wish the hostess's daughter "many happy returns of the day."

As it happened, there was a momentary stagnation of the flood of guests when Miss Marlenspuyk went up to say farewell, and she had a chance to congratulate the daughter of the house on the success of her coming-out tea.

"Then I must tell you, Miss Marlenspuyk," said the hostess, "that you completely fascinated little Miss Peters."

"She's a pretty little thing," the old maid returned, "with excellent manners. That comes with the blood, I suppose; she told me she was a granddaughter of the Bishop, you know. She isn't like so many of the girls here, who take what manners they have out of a book. They get them up overnight, but she was born with them. And she has the final sign of breeding, which is so rare nowadays—she listens when her elders are talking."

"Yes," the hostess replied, "Pauline Peters has pleasant manners, for all she is working on a newspaper now."

"On a newspaper?" repeated Miss Marlenspuyk. "She told me she was writing for her living, but she didn't say she was on a newspaper."

"She said something about giving it up as she went out," the hostess remarked; "but I shouldn't think she would, for she has been doing very well. Some of her articles have made quite a hit. You know she is the 'Polly Perkins' of the Daily Dial?"

"No," said Miss Marlenspuyk—"no, I didn't know that."

THERE had been a hesitating fall of snow in the morning, but before noon it had turned to a mild and fitful rain that had finally modified itself into a clinging mist as evening drew near. The heavy snow-storm of the last week in January had left the streets high on both sides with banks that thawed swiftly whenever the sun came out again, the water running from them into the broad gutters, and then freezing hard at night, when the cold wind swept across the city. Now, at nightfall, after a muggy day, a sickening slush had spread itself treacherously over all the crossings. The shop-girls going home had to pick their way cautiously from corner to corner under the iron pillars supporting the station of the elevated railroad. Train followed train overhead, each close on the other's heels; and clouds of steam swirled down as the engines came to a full stop with a shrill grinding of the brakes. From the skeleton spans of the elevated road moisture dripped on the cable-cars below, as they rumbled along with their bells clanging sharply when they neared the crossings. The atmosphere was thick with a damp haze; and there was a halo about every yellow globe in the windows of the bar-rooms at the four corners of the avenue. More frequent, as the dismal day wore to an end, was the hoarse and lugubrious tooting of the ferryboats in the East River.

Under the steps of the stairs leading up to the aërial station of the railroad overhead, an Italian street vender had wheeled the barrow whereon he proffered for sale bananas and apples and nuts. At one end of this stand was the cylinder in which he was roasting peanuts, and which he ground as conscientiously as though he were turning a hand-organ. A scant quarter past six o'clock it might have been, when he opened his fire-box to throw in a stick or two more of fuel and to warm his stiffened fingers in the flame. The sudden red glare, glowing through the drizzle, caught the eye of a middle-aged man who was crossing the avenue. So insecure was his footing that this momentary relaxation of his attention was sufficient cause for a false step. His feet slipped from under him and he fell flat on his back, striking just below the right shoulder-blade upon a compact mass of snow, hardened by the chilly breeze, and yet softer than the stone pavement.

The concussion knocked the breath out of him; and he lay there for a minute almost, gasping again and again, wholly unable to raise himself. As he struggled to get to his feet and to refill his lungs with air, he heard a shop-girl cry, "Oh, Liz, did you see him fall? Wasn't it awful?" And then he heard her companion respond, "I say, Mame, you ask him if he's hurt bad." Then two men stepped from the sidewalk and lifted him to his feet, while a boy picked up his hat and handed it to him.

"That's all right," said one of the men; "there ain't no bones broke, is there?"

The man who had fallen was getting his breath back slowly. "No," he panted, "there's nothing broke"—and he cautiously moved his limbs to make sure.

"Ye've knocked the wind out of ye," the other man returned, "but ye'll get it again in a jiffy. Come into Pat M'Cann's here and have a drink; that'll put the life into ye again."

"That's it," agreed the man who had been helped to his feet—"that's it; get me into Pat M'Cann's—they know me there—I can rest a bit—then I'll be all right again in a little." He broke his sentences short, but even thus he was able to speak only with effort.

Taking him each by one arm, the two men helped him into the saloon almost at the door of which he had slipped. They led him straight up to the bar.

"Good-evenin', Mr. Malone," was the barkeeper's greeting. "The boss was after askin' for ye." Then seeing the ashen face of the new-comer, he added, "It's not well ye're lookin'. What can I give ye?"

The man addressed as Malone was plainly attired; his clothes were tidy but shiny; his overcoat was thin, and it was now thickly stained down the back by the slush into which he had fallen. The bronze button of the Grand Army was in the buttonhole of his threadbare coat.

He steadied himself by the railing before the bar. "Ye may give me—a little whiskey, Tom," he said, still gasping, "and ask these gentlemen—what they'll take."

These gentlemen joined him in taking whiskey. Then they again assured him he would be all right in a jiffy; and with that they left him standing before the bar, and went their several ways.

There was nobody else in the saloon, for the moment, as it chanced; and Tom, the barkeeper, was able to give undivided attention to Mr. Malone.

"It's sorry the boss'll be to hear of yer fallin' here at his door, an' he not there to pick ye up," he remarked. "But ye'd better bide till he comes in again. Ye'll not get your breath back so easy either—I've been knocked out myself, an' I know—though it wa'n't no ice that downed me."

"So Pat M'Cann wanted to see me, did he?" asked Malone, trying to draw a long breath and finding it impossible, as the bruised muscles of his back refused to yield. "Oh—well, then I'll sit me down here and wait."

"There's yer old place in the corner," Tom responded.

"I'll smoke a pipe," said Malone, moving away, "if I haven't broke it in my fall. No; I've got it right enough," he added, taking the brier-wood from the breast-pocket of his coat.

As Malone was shuffling slowly forward towards a table in a corner of the saloon, the street-door was pushed open and the owner of the barroom entered—a tall man, with a high hat and a fur-trimmed overcoat. M'Cann went straight to the bar.

"Tom," he asked, "how many of those labor-tickets have I now in the glass there?"

Tom looked in a tumbler on the top shelf of a rack against the wall behind him. "There's five of 'em left," he answered.

"Barry M'Cormack will be in before we close and he'll ask ye for them, and ye'll give him three of them," said the owner of the saloon. "Tell him it's all I have. An' if Jerry O'Connor is here again wantin' me to go bail for his brother in the Tombs, ye must stand him off. I don't want to do it, ye see, an' I don't want neither to tell him I don't want to."

"An' what will I tell him, then?" asked the barkeeper. "Hadn't I better say ye've gone to Washington to see the Sinator?"

"Tell him what you please," responded M'Cann, "but be easy with him."

"I'll do what I can," Tom promised. "Ye was askin' for Danny Malone before ye went out. That's him now in the corner. It's a bad fall he had out there on the ice. The drop knocked him out—but there's no bones broken."

"What I've got to tell him won't make him feel easier," returned M'Cann. "But I'll get it over as soon as I can." And with that he crossed the saloon to the farther corner, where Malone had taken his seat before a little table.

Looking up as M'Cann came towards him, Malone recognized the owner of the saloon and tried to rise to his feet; but the suddenness of his movement was swiftly resented by the strained muscles of his back, and he dropped sharply on the seat, his face wincing with the pain, which also took his breath away again.

"Well, Dan, old man," said M'Cann, "so ye've had a bad fall, sure. I'm sorry for that. Don't get up!—rest yerself there, and brace up."

The tall frame of the saloon-keeper towered stiffly beside the bent figure of the man who had had the fall, and who now looked up in the face of the other in the hope of seeing good news written there.

"Well, Pat," he began, getting his breath again, "I've had a fall—but it's nothin'—I'll be over it—in an hour or two. I'm strong enough yet—for any place ye can get me—"

He had fixed his gaze hungrily on the eyes of the other, and he was waiting eagerly for a word of hope.

The saloon-keeper lowered his glance and then cleared his throat. He had unbuttoned his overcoat and the large diamond in his shirt-front was now exposed.

Before he made answer to this appeal the elder man spoke again, overmastered by anxiety.

"Did ye see him?" he asked.

"Yes," was the response, "I saw him."

"An' will he do it for ye?" was the next passing question.

"He'd do it for me if he could, but he can't," returned M'Cann.

"He can't?" asked Malone. "An' why not?"

"Because the appointment isn't his, he says," the saloon-keeper explained. "He'd be glad to give the place to a friend of mine if he could, he told me—but there's the civil-service. He's got to follow that, he says, more by token that they raised such a row the last time he tried to beat the law."

"But I'm a veteran," pleaded the other, "I served my three years. The civil-service has got to count that, hasn't it?"

"Ye might be on the list this very minute, and it wouldn't do any good," the saloon-keeper responded; "there's veterans to burn on the list now!"

"My post will recommend me, if I ask 'em—won't that help?"

"Nothing will help, he says," M'Cann explained. "It isn't a pull that'll do ye any good, or I could get ye the job myself, couldn't I?"

"There ain't no influence that'll help me, then?" was the elder man's next question.

"As I'm tellin' ye, I done what I could, and I don't believe any man in the district couldn't do more," the saloon-keeper answered. "He says he'd rather give ye the job than not, but he can't. He's got to take the civil-service man."

"Then there ain't nothin' else you can do?" asked Malone, hopelessly.

"I'd do anythin' I could," M'Cann replied. "But I don't see nothin' more to be done. That dog won't fight, that's all. The jig's up, there ain't no two ways about it. Of course, if I hear of anythin' else I'll tell ye—and I'll get it for ye, if I can. But it's been a pretty cold winter for the boys, so far; you know that well enough."

The other said nothing; his head had fallen, and his eyes were staring vacantly at a box of sand across the saloon.

The saloon-keeper drew a breath of relief that the interview was over.

"Well," he said, turning away, "I must be goin' now. I've got to see the new man who's got that contract for fillin' in up on the Harlem."

"Don't think I ain't beholden to you, Pat," Malone declared, raising his head again. "Ye know I am that, and I know ye've done yer best for me."

"I did that," M'Cann admitted, taking the hand the other held out; "an' it's better I hope I can do some other time, maybe."

With that he shook Malone's hand gently and left the saloon, calling to the barkeeper as he passed, "I'll be back in an hour, if there's anybody wants me. An' make Danny Malone as comfortable as ye can. It's a bad shock he's had."

As the owner of the saloon left it three customers came in, and were served, and tossed off their drinks standing, and went out again; and the dank night-air was blown in as they swung open the outer door.

Then the barkeeper went down to the corner where Malone was sitting, with his pipe in his fingers, unlighted and unfilled, gazing fixedly at vacancy.

"Mr. Malone," he said, "is it better ye're feelin' now? Have ye got yer breath again?"

"Yes, yes," answered Malone, rousing himself, "I'm better now." And he tried to rise again; and again he sat down suddenly, seized with muscular pangs. "I'm better—but I'd best—stay here a while yet—I'm thinking."

"That's it," responded Tom, cheerfully, "get a rest here. Let me fill yer pipe for ye. There ain't nothin' so soothin' as a pipe, I don't think. An' I don't believe a drop of old ale would hurt ye, would it now?"

Five minutes later Dan Malone had his pipe alight in his mouth and a glass of ale before him on the table. He drank the liquid slowly, barely a mouthful at a time; and he smoked irregularly also, scarcely keeping the pipe alight. He sat there by himself, limp on the seat, with his last hope washed out of him.

Half an hour afterwards the saloon happened again to be empty, and seeing the barkeeper at liberty, Malone asked for the loan of an inkstand and a pen, and for a sheet of paper and an envelope. When the table had been wiped off, and these things were placed on it before him, he ordered another glass of ale, and he filled his pipe again.

After he had taken a sip or two of the ale and pulled four or five times at the pipe, he squared himself painfully to the task of writing.

First, he addressed the envelope to "Hon. Terence O'Donnell, Assembly, Albany"; then he thrust this on one side to dry, and began on the letter itself. His handwriting was more irregular than usual; it had always been cramped and straggling, but now it was shaky also.

When he had made an end of the letter he had a pull or two at his pipe, and then he finished his beer. He took up what he had written and read it over carefully to see if he had said all that needed to be said. Satisfied, he folded it and tucked it inside the envelope. After four or five whiffs more his pipe was smoked out. He emptied it on the table with a sharp rap, and methodically put it back in the breast-pocket of his coat.

Then he raised himself to his feet slowly and carefully, not knowing just what bruised muscle he might chance to stretch by an inadvertent gesture. He shuffled across to the bar and paid for his drinks, and asked the barkeeper if there was a stamp to be had. As it happened, Tom was able to give him one, which he stuck on the corner of the envelope.

"Say, Mr. Malone," asked the barkeeper, "ye don't want no tickets for the Lady Dazzlers' Coterie Mask and Civic Ball, to-night, do ye? It's goin' to be the most high-toned blow-out they ever had."

"I'm not goin' to balls any more," Malone answered, "I'm too old now."

Buttoning his thin overcoat tightly across the chest, he held out his hand to Tom, to the barkeeper's great surprise.

"Good-bye," he said, "Good-bye. Maybe I won't see you again, Tom."

"Good-bye, Mr. Malone," Tom answered. "But ye'll be better in the mornin,' I'm thinkin'."

"Yes," the elder man repeated, "I'll be better in the mornin'. Yes; I'm goin' to make sure of that, to-night."

When he opened the outer door of the saloon the damp moisture suddenly filled his lungs and he choked, but he dared not cough, as the strained muscles of his side warned him.

Two doors above the saloon was a pawnbroker's office, with the three golden balls hanging over the door, and with the unredeemed pledges offered for sale in the broad window. Into this store Malone made his way, glad to get out of the dank air, if only for a moment.

In perhaps five minutes he came forth holding in his hand the envelope addressed to the Honorable Terence O'Donnell. He paused on the threshold of the pawnshop and, by the light of the gas-jets in its window, he put the pawn-ticket into the letter and then closed it. In the large right-hand pocket of his thin overcoat there was something that had not been there when he entered the pawnbroker's—something irregular in shape; it was the revolver he had bought with the money advanced on his watch.

He turned down the avenue again, for there was a letter-box on the lamp-post at the corner occupied by M'Cann's saloon. The store between the pawnbroker's and the barroom was an undertaker's; and Malone, walking slowly past, saw in the window a little coffin, lined with white satin.

"It'll take a bigger one than that for me," he said. "To-night's Friday—they'll be havin' the funeral on Sunday."

At the corner he dropped the letter into the box on the lamp-post, just as there came a weird shriek from an impatient tug in the river far behind him. While he was waiting for a cable-car a lame newsboy limped up to him and proffered the evening papers with a beseeching look. Malone felt in his pocket and found only two coins, a nickel and a quarter. He gave the quarter to the newsboy. Then he lifted himself painfully on the rear platform of a cable-car, and handed the nickel to the impatient conductor. The car clanged forward again; and soon the halo about its colored lamp faded away in the murky distance.

(1895.)

IT was a little dinner indeed, a dinner for eight only; and it was given one evening in March, in a spacious and handsome dwelling in Madison Avenue, high up on the slope of Murray Hill. The wide dining-room was at the rear of the house, and it had a broad butler's-pantry extending into the yard behind. The large kitchen was under the dining-room; and under the butler's-pantry was a room of the same size which the servants used as a parlor. In one corner of this sitting-room for the domestics was the dumb-waiter which connected with the pantry above, and in another corner was a spiral staircase which allowed the butler to descend swiftly to the kitchen in case of emergency. There was a table near the window of this servants' parlor, with a battered student-lamp on it; and around the table were grouped three or four chairs.

A whistle sounded gently in the kitchen, and the Swedish cook walked leisurely to the speaking-tube and whistled back. Then she listened, and heard the butler say, "They're all here now; I've got the oysters on the table, and I'm a-goin' in now to announce dinner to the madam. So you get that soup ready—do you hear?"

The cook did not deign to make any direct reply, but, as she left the speaking-tube and went back to the range, she said, loud enough to be heard by the servants in the sitting-room adjoining, "As though I did not know anything! I will never have another place if a black man is butler."

In the room under the pantry a sharp, wiry boy was grinning. "They're allus havin' spats, ain't they, them two? If I was Cato I wouldn't let no Dutch cook sass me, even if I was a nigger, would you?"

"Who is this young cub, when he's at 'ome?" asked the clean-shaven, trim-looking young British valet.

"He's Tim," answered the Irish laundress.

"I'm Tim," said the boy, indignantly, "that's who I am, and I'm as good as you are, too, for all you belong to a lord! And you needn't put on no frills with me, neither, for when I'm a year or two older I can lick ye!—see?"

"Don't ye mind the boy, Mr. Parsons," the Irish girl intervened. "He's no call here at all, at all. He'd run of an errand belike in the mornin' and does be sthrivin' to make himself useful. That's why they kept him here the night."

"I've got just as good a right here as he has," the boy declared, "and he doesn't come here after you either, Maggie—you're not his steady. It's that French Elise he is sparkin'."

"An' greatly I care if he is! Sparkin', in truth! Bad cess to yer impidence," said the pleasant-faced laundress, drawing herself up. "A man, is it? It's lashins and lavins of men I could have if I'd a mind."

Fortunately the cook called Tim at this juncture and gave him a chore to do; and so left the Irish girl and the young Englishman alone.

The valet had been standing until then with his hat and cane in his hand and his overcoat across his arm. Now he laid these things on the table and took his seat by the side of the comely Irishwoman.

"Mam'zelle," he began, "is a French girl, of course, and I never could abide a foreign lingo. Now it's a pleasure for me to hear you talk, Miss Maggie."

"Ah, do be aisy, now, Mr. Parsons," she returned, coquettishly.

"It's gospel truth," he rejoined. "I enjoy talkin' to you. You keep your eyes wide open and can always tell me what's goin' on!"

"Troth, can I?" replied the laundress. "I know which ind of the egg the chicken'll be after chippin'—every time."

"Then tell me who's dinin' 'ere to-night," the valet asked.

Before she could answer the whistle sounded faintly again, and the cook immediately brought in the green-turtle soup in the handsome silver tureen, and sent it up on the dumb-waiter. Then she returned at once to the kitchen.

"It's not a big dinner," the Irishwoman explained. "There's only eight of them. There's us three, isn't there?—Mr. and Mrs. Van Allen and Miss Ethel. Then there's your lord—and I'll go bail it's Miss Ethel he's after now? He'll be the lucky man if he gets her, too; it's a sweet angel she is."

"She won't be so unlucky to 'ave 'im neither," the Englishman returned, "mark that! She'll be Lady Stanyhurst, won't she? And my lord is a fine figure of a man, too!"

"Sure it isn't under the skin of any man that ever stepped to be worthy the likes of Miss Ethel!" said Maggie, looking at Parsons out of the corner of her eye.

"There ain't any girl in the States 'ere that wouldn't be proud to 'ave my lord," the valet retorted. "There's lots of 'em settin' their caps for 'im now. He can 'ave 'is pick, 'e can."

"The sorra cap Miss Ethel'll set for him or any man," the laundress declared. "The boy that wants her'll have to court her."

"I 'ave reason to believe that the marriage is arranged," Parsons asserted. "I 'ope—" then he paused, and with an effort he went on again: "I hope that 'er father is a warm man? He's good to give the girl a plum at least, I 'ope? We couldn't throw ourselves away on a girl who 'adn't a plum, you know."

"An' what might a plum be?" asked Maggie.

"A plum," the young Englishman explained, "is a 'undred thousand pounds—'alf a million dollars, isn't it?"

"It's a whole million Mr. Van Allen can give Miss Ethel," Maggie said, "and more, too, if he wanted to. By the same token, they do be after tellin' me he has one big building down-town somewhere—I don't know—where the tenants pay him a hundred thousand dollars a year; an' they pay it, too, regular, an' nivver an eviction from one year's end to the other."

The whistle shrilled out again, and the cook made haste to place on the dumb-waiter the dish containing the fillets of sea-bass.

A few minutes later Mlle. Elise, the French maid of Miss Van Allen, entered the servants' sitting-room, and was cordially greeted by Mr. Parsons. It appeared that the Frenchwoman had been detained in Mrs. Van Allen's room relieving the guests of their wraps.

"Zat ole maid, Miss Marlenspuyk—what devil of name it is—" said Elise, "she is a true grande dame; but that Mistress Playfair—oh! I cannot suffer her! She is—how you say—made up? stuck up?"

"It's both stuck up and med up she is," the Irish laundress declared. "She's that painted her own mother wouldn't know her. An' as for stuck up, her manners is that bad there isn't none of her girls will stay in her house the second month; they gets their bit of money and they goes. Sure my brother is coachman there, and it's seven years he's had the place."

"How can he rest zere," asked the French maid, "if she is so stuck up?"

"Ah, my brother is a steady lad, and they get on very well," Maggie returned. "He knows his place, and she knows her place, too. She never says nothin' to him, and he never says nothin' to her. An' it's a good job he has, an' he don't mean to let go of it. He keeps a still tongue in his head, Danny does; but there's months when, with his wages and with his board-wages and with what he makes on the feed, the place is worth more than a hundred dollars to him."

"It's as much as a man's place is worth sometimes to accept the commission you're entitled to," the valet remarked.

"Ah, but Danny's the boy!" the laundress responded, shrewdly. "It's too much he knows about Mrs. Playfair for him to lose the job; trust him for that! As long as he wants that place he can have it an' welcome; she won't never say nothin' to him."

"Is she a widow or is she divorced, zis Mistress Playfair?" asked the French maid.

"She's the wan an' the other," said the laundress, with a laugh. "Mr. Playfair, he took and died a week after the trial, barrin' a day."

"What's this I 'ear about your Mr. Van Allen and Mrs. Playfair?" Parsons inquired.

"Is there anything between them, do you think?"

The whistle was heard again, and the cook passed before them with a saddle of mutton; and for the moment the valet's question remained unanswered.

"Who is it they have to dinner, after all?" the laundress inquired. "There's our three and your lord and Miss Marlenspuyk and Mrs. Playfair—but that's sure only six. There was to be eight all out, I'm thinkin'. It's two more men they must have."

"I heard his lordship say that he expected to meet the Lord Bishop of Tuxedo," the Englishman remarked.

"And madame say zat ze judge would be here," said the French maid.

"Judge Gillespie?" asked the valet, with a certain interest.

"Yes," the Frenchwoman answered, "the Judge Gillespie. What does that make to you zat you jump like zat?"

"Oh, nothin', nothin' at all," returned Parsons, settling himself back in his chair with a snigger.

"Out with it!" cried the Irish girl. "Don't be grinnin' all night there like a stuck pig! Out with it—I see it's on the end of your tongue."

"But yes—but yes," urged the maid, "what is it you have to laugh?"

"Really," the valet began, "I don't know that I ought to say anything 'ere in this 'ouse, you know—house, I mean. But I 'ave been told that this 'ere Judge Gillespie is a very great friend of Mrs. Van Allen's. Mind, I don't say there's anything wrong in it, you know. I only tell you what I 'ave 'eard tell myself in society 'ere and there. You see this ain't the only 'ouse I visit in New York, not by a long shot it ain't. And knowin' I visit 'ere, why, naturally, you see, my other friends tell me the news, you know—the news about the goin's on 'ere, you know."

The Irish laundress and the French maid looked at each other for a moment, and then both laughed.

"It's not outside they get the first news, is it?" the laundress inquired.

Apparently the maid was also going to make a remark, but she changed her mind as the cook again came to the dumb-waiter with the dish of little silver saucepans containing terrapin.

The valet was somewhat puzzled by the failure of his two attempts to open the family cupboard of the host and hostess for an inspection of the skeletons it might contain.

"I don't know how she has them seated at the table," Maggie declared.

"Of course, his lordship took her in," the Englishman declared. "A earl 'as precedence of a judge or a bishop."

"I'd like to have a look at that lordship of yours," the Irishwoman said, as she rose to her feet. "I'll slip up the stairs there, and maybe I can get a glimpse of 'em through the door an' no one a ha'p'orth the wiser. Is it a young man your lordship is?"

"His lordship is a young man yet," the valet replied.

"I know what that means," the laundress answered. "If he's a young man yet, I'll go bail he hasn't a hair between him an' heaven. An' to think that our Miss Ethel here is to take up with a poor hairless cratur like that. Well, well, there's no accountin' for tastes! Maybe I'll marry a Dutchman myself one of these days."

And with that she began to climb the spiral staircase in the corner of the room.

"What sort of a man is he, your milord?" asked the Frenchwoman.

"He is not a bad sort at all," the Englishman answered. "Your young lady might do worse than 'ave 'im, you know—have him, I mean. I won't say but that 'e's been a bit fast in 'is time, you know; but that's nothin' to her now, is it? 'E's sowed his wild oats long ago, and 'e's ready to marry now and settle down."

"He is zen—défraíchi—how you say—worn? your milord?" the Frenchwoman went on. "And mademoiselle is an angel of candor. Zey would give her le bon Dieu wizout confession."

"Angel or no angel," returned Mr. Parsons, "there isn't any better catch in the three kingdoms than 'is lordship to-day. 'E's a earl, isn't 'e? And then there's the castle! Your young lady wouldn't be in a 'urry to let 'im go if she'd only seen the castle, now!"

"Mademoiselle has seen ze castle," was the answer.

"Well, I'll be damned!" said the valet.

"But yes," the French maid explained. "Last summer, in London, your milord was presented to mademoiselle, and he began to make his court. Fifteen days after, when we were at Leamington, mademoiselle and I, we go see your castle."

"It's a tip-topper now, ain't it?" he asked. "There's sometimes twenty and thirty of us in the servants' 'all, and there's goin's on, and larks, and all manner of sport. If this match comes off, now, between 'is lordship and your young lady, will you come with her or stay here with her mother?"

"Never of the life do I quit mademoiselle," the Frenchwoman responded.

"Then I'll 'ope to 'ave the honor of introducin' you into the best society at the castle whenever you come over," urged Mr. Parsons.

The Irish laundress now began to descend the spiral stairs. The cook also came into the room and went towards the dumb-waiter, carrying a silver platter, on which shook and shone a dozen little jellied cones.

"An' what might that be in thrimbles like that?" asked the Irishwoman, with curiosity.

"Pâté de foie gras en aspic," the cook responded, curtly, sending up the dish and then returning silently to the kitchen.

"Patti's photograph?" repeated the laundress. "Do ye mind the impidence of her, tellin' me a lie like that?"

The English valet looked at the French maid and laughed. Then he explained, patronizingly:

"Patty de four grass, as we call it in French—not Patti's photograph. It's a delicacy, and it's made of goose livers."

"Then why couldn't that Dutch cook have said so?" the laundress asked, indignantly. "I've as good a right to know about a goose as ever she has. I misdoubt she was that poor where she came from they had never the grass of a goose to their cabin."

"Did you see 'is lordship?" asked the valet.

"I did that," the Irish girl replied, "an' what did I tell you about him? His head has grown through his hair! There's been good and bad harvests since he was young, I'm thinkin'—and it's mighty quare he looks about his eyes, too. It'll be a poor day for Miss Ethel when she marries a bald-headed ould runt like that, for all he's a lord!"

"Oh, I say, Miss Maggie; you must not speak so disrespectful of his lordship," Parsons insisted; "really, now, you mustn't."

"It's that Mrs. Playfair 'ud be the match for him, I'm thinkin'," said Maggie. "It's a bold-faced creature she is, an' no more clothes on her than ain't decent anyway. And then, how she looked at Mr. Van Allen and then at the bishop; and how she talked—I'd no patience with her. Do ye mind what it was I heard her say now?"

"How could we know what you 'eard her say?" the valet responded, impatiently.

"Sure, amn't I tellin' ye?" the Irish girl returned. "She was talkin' to the bishop, and she says, says she. 'The judge is a better man than you, bishop,' she says, 'leastwise he makes more people happy,' she says. 'How so?' says the bishop, says he. 'This way,' she says; 'when you marry a couple you make two people happy,' she says, 'an' when the judge divorces a couple he makes four people happy,' she says. Miss Ethel and the old lady with the white hair, they said nothin', but the rest of them laughed."

What further fragments of the conversation at the dinner-table up-stairs Maggie had been able to gather during her brief visit to the butler's-pantry could not then be made known to the other domestics, for Tim came slouching into the sitting-room.

"Say, Maggie," he began, "didn't you hear that ring at the bell? That's your feller—I seen him. He's out at the gate now."

"Is it the letter-man you mean?" asked Maggie, adjusting her hair as she passed the looking-glass.

"Ah, go on," returned Tim, impatiently, "what t'ell are you givin' us? How many fellers do you want, say?"

After Maggie had chased Tim out of the room, the Swedish cook went to the dumb-waiter once more to send up the four smoking canvas-backs that lay luxuriously on their cushions of fried hominy.

The French maid and the English valet continued to chat, discussing chiefly the personal peculiarities of the members of the households in which they had served. His former masters Parsons was willing enough to find fault with, but Lord Stanyhurst he seemed to think it a point of honor to defend. Mrs. Van Allen the Frenchwoman had no high opinion of, nor of Mr. Kortright Van Allen; but of their daughter, Miss Ethel Van Allen, she could not say too much in praise.

"I told that wild Irish girl that the marriage was arranged," said Parsons, "and I'm sure I 'ope so with all my heart, for 'is lordship needs money badly—I don't mind tellin' you, mam'zelle, 'e 'asn't paid me my wages this six months, not that I'd demean myself by askin' for them. But is it really settled, after all?—that's what I'd like to know."

"I zink so," the Frenchwoman responded; "you see, mademoiselle is not happy here. Monsieur and madame are at drawn knives. Zey have not spoken since two years."

"Mr. and Mrs. Van Allen don't speak to each other?" asked Parsons, with great interest. "But they must be speaking to each other there at dinner now."

"Oh, at dinner, yes," the French maid explained; "in the world, yes, zey talk zemselves. But at ze house, never a word. Zat is so sad for mademoiselle, is it not? It is not remarkable zat she marry herself with anybody to get out of ze house."

"Oh, ho!" rejoined the valet, "I see, I see! But if that's the way she's been brought up, you know, I don't believe she will 'it it off with 'is lordship."

"If he makes her not happy, your milord—" began the maid, forcibly, "but he must. He must render her happy, for she will have nobody to go to after ze marriage except her husband."

"Whatever do you mean by that?" asked Parsons, a little suspiciously.

"I know what I mean," she responded. "Monsieur and madame only attend till mademoiselle is married, and zen zey are divorced. Zey don't tell me zat, no—but I know."

"Yes," the valet admitted, "it ain't so very 'ard to find out a thing like that."

"And I know more yet," added the French maid. "I am not blind, am I? I can see that two and two make four, is it not? Zen, I tell you zat after ze marriage of mademoiselle, monsieur and madame are divorced, zat is one zing. Zen madame will marry zat Judge Gillespie, and monsieur will marry zat Madame Playfair—you see!"

"That would be a rum start, now, wouldn't it?" was the only comment of Parsons.

At this moment the portly form of Cato, the black butler, was seen descending the staircase in the corner of the room.

As soon as the aged negro's white head was visible he paused, and leaning over the light iron railing he addressed himself to the young Englishman.

"Misto' Parsons," he said, solemnly, "yo' lord knows a good thing when he gets it, sah! He tasted my celery salad, and he said to Mrs. Van Allen that he hadn't never eaten no better salad than that, sah, and I don't believe he never did, neither!"

So saying he slowly withdrew up-stairs again, as the cook advanced to the dumb-waiter carrying the Nesselrode pudding.

(1896.)