“And now that each of you have made a discovery in the row of houses, let me try my luck.”  Overtop rubbed the window, looked out, and carefully surveyed the row from end to end, and back again.  “Ah, I have it!” he said.  “A real mystery, too.  Look at that four-story house near the western end of the block, the one a trifle shabbier than its neighbors.  Do you see, in the open window, a man with a pale, intellectual face, gray hair, and arms bare to the elbows, filing away at something held in a vise before him?  Now he stops to examine a paper—­a plan, probably—­which he holds in his hand.  Now he wipes the perspiration from his forehead.  Can’t you see him?”

“Distinctly,” was the joint reply.

“What do you suppose he is doing?” asked Overtop.

“No idea,” said Wilkeson.  “Perhaps mending a teakettle.”

“Or repairing an umbrella,” suggested Maltboy.

Overtop smiled, and said: 

“A person with the slightest powers of observation, would see that that man has genius in his face; that his thin arm is not used to hard mechanical labor; that his brain is so heated with great ideas, that he tries to cool it by opening the window.  The tinkering of an umbrella or teakettle would not make a man sweat in midwinter.  You won’t deny the force of that suggestion.”

As he spoke, a young girl advanced from the back part of the room, and stood by the pale workman’s side.  She wore a bonnet, and a shawl tightly wrapped around her.  Though the features of her face could not be distinguished in the distance, it was not hard to detect a pleasant expression in her eyes, a smile on her lips, and a high color on her cheeks, as if she had just come in from the street.  She held up a little basket for the workman’s inspection.

He paused in his labor, took the girl’s head between his hands, and kissed her fondly on the brow.  Then he opened the little basket, and drew from it a loaf of bread and a piece of cheese, which he began eating hurriedly.  He also seemed, by signs, to press the girl to eat; but she shook her head, smiled more than before, and looked up affectionately into his face.  Having bolted a few mouthfuls, the workman placed the remains of the repast on the bench or table before him, kissed the young girl, and resumed his work.  She watched every motion of his hand with eager eyes.  Once she moved as if to close the window, but he shook his head, and again wiped the sweat from his brow.

He had consulted the paper, and attacked his task with fresh energy for the third or fourth time, when his eyes happened to rest upon the window full of scrutinizing faces.  His lips moved in some sudden exclamation, and then he shut the window with vehemence, and drew the curtain which obscured the lower half of it.

“Not a very kind reception of your theory, so far,” said Marcus.

“Prejudice—­nothing more,” said Overtop.  “When they see that we have no wish to pry into their private affairs, but are animated with a neighborly regard for them, they will not repel our advances.  It isn’t human nature.”