This was the first woman that Mrs. Brewster had talked to—­really talked to—­since leaving Winnebago.  And she liked women.  She missed them.  At first she had eyed wonderingly, speculatively, the women she saw on Fifth Avenue.  Swathed luxuriously in precious pelts, marvelously coiffed and hatted, wearing the frailest of boots and hose, exhaling a mysterious heady scent they were more like strange exotic birds than women.

The clerks in the shops, too—­they were so remote, so contemptuous.  When she went into Gerretson’s, back home Nellie Monahan was likely to say:  “You’ve certainly had a lot of wear out of that blue, Mrs. Brewster.  Let’s see, you’ve had it two—­three years this spring?  My land!  Let me show you our new taupes.”

Pa Brewster had taken to conversing with the doorman.  That adamantine individual, unaccustomed to being addressed as a human being, was startled at first, surly and distrustful.  But he mellowed under Hosey’s simple and friendly advances.  They became quite pals, these two—­perhaps two as lonely men as you could find in all lonely New York.

“I guess you ain’t a New Yorker, huh?” Mike said.

“Me?  No.”

“Th’ most of the folks in th’ buildin’ ain’t.”

“Ain’t!” Hosea Brewster was startled into it.  “They’re artists, aren’t they?  Most of ’em?”

“No!  Out-of-town folks, like you.  West, East an’ Californy, an’ around there.  Livin’ here, though.  Seem t’ like it better’n where they come from.  I dunno.”

Hosey Brewster took to eying them as Mrs. Brewster had eyed the women.  He wondered about them, these tight, trim men, rather short of breath, buttoned so snugly into their shining shoes and their tailored clothes, with their necks bulging in a fold of fat above the back of their white linen collar.  He knew that he would never be like them.  It wasn’t his square-toe shoes that made the difference, or his grey hat, or his baggy trousers.  It was something inside him—­something he lacked, he thought.  It never occurred to him that it was something he possessed that they did not.

“Enjoying yourself, Milly?”

“I should say I am, father.”

“That’s good.  No housework and responsibility to this, is there?”

“It’s play.”

She hated the toy gas stove, and the tiny ice chest and the screen pantry.  All her married life she had kept house in a big, bounteous way; apples in barrels; butter in firkins; flour in sacks; eggs in boxes; sugar in bins; cream in crocks.  Sometimes she told herself, bitterly, that it was easier to keep twelve rooms tidy and habitable than one combination kitchen-dining-and-living room.

“Chops taste good, Hosey?”

“Grand.  But you oughtn’t to be cooking around like this.  We’ll eat out to-morrow night somewhere, and go to a show.”

“You’re enjoying it, aren’t you, Hosey, h’m?”

“It’s the life, mother!  It’s the life!”