And now she was tripping down the bare wooden stairs beside the dark greasy wall, and thinking of her future husband, the rich Mayor, who must be either the bachelor police captain of the precinct, or George Fletcher, the wealthy and unmarried factory-owner near by, or, perhaps, Senator Eisenstone, the district leader, who, she was forced to reflect, was an unlikely hero for a Catholic girl, since he was a Hebrew.  But just as she reached the street door and decided that Jerry would do well enough as a mere temporary James the butler, and while Jerry was waiting for her on the corner, she stepped from the stoop directly in front of George Fletcher.

“Good evening,” said the wealthy, young employer.

“Good evening, Mr. Fletcher.”

“It’s very embarrassing,” said Mr. Fletcher:  “I know your given name—­Cordelia, isn’t it?—­but your last na—­Oh, thank you—­Miss Mahoney, of course.  You know we met at that very queer wedding in the home of my little apprentice, Joe—­the line-man’s wedding, you know.”

“Te he!” Cordelia giggled.  “Wasn’t that a terrible strange wedding?  I think it was just terrible.”

“Were you going somewhere?”

“Oh, not at all, Mr. Fletcher,” with another nervous giggle or two.  “I have no plans on me mind, only to get out of doors.  It’s terrible hot, ain’t it?”

“May I take a walk with you, Miss Mahoney?”

It seemed to her that if he had called her Clarice the whole novel would have come true then and there.

“I can’t be out very late, Mr. Fletcher,” said she, with a giggle of delight.

“Are you sure I am not disarranging your plans?  Had you no engagements?”

“Oh no,” said she; “I was only going out with me lonely.”

“Let us take just a short walk, then,” said Fletcher; “only you must be the man and take me in charge, Miss Mahoney, for I never walked with a young lady in my life.”

“Oh, certainly not; you never did—­I don’t think.”

“Upon my honor, Miss Mahoney, I know only one woman in this city—­Miss Whitfield, the doctor’s daughter, who lives in the same house with you; and only one other in the world—­my aunt, who brought me up, in Vermont.”

Well indeed did Cordelia know this.  All the neighborhood knew it, and most of the other girls were conscious of a little flutter in their breasts when his eyes fell upon them in the streets, for it was the gossip of all who knew his workmen that the prosperous ladder-builder lived in his factory, where his had spent the life of a monk, without any society except of his canaries, his books, and his workmen.

“Well, I declare!” sighed Cordelia.  “How terrible cunning you men are, to get up such a story to make all the girls think you’re romantic!”

But, oh, how happy Cordelia was!  At last she had met her prince—­the future Mayor—­her Sultan of the gilded halls.  In that humid, sticky, midsummer heat among the tenements, every other woman dragged along as if she weighed a thousand pounds, but Cordelia felt like a feather floating among clouds.