The “room” was now the lodging of two single men, as the good old ship-phrase goes.  Upstairs, in the room over the kitchen, the Phillips family slept, six in all.  There would have been seven, only the eldest girl, a child of ten, slept with Nellie in the little front room over the door, an arrangement which was not in the bond but was volunteered by the single woman in one of her fits of indignation against pigging together.  The other front room was also rented by a single man when they could get him.  Just now it was tenantless, an additional cause of sorrow to Mrs. Phillips, whose stock card, “Furnished Lodgings for a Single Man,” was now displayed at the front window, making the house in that respect very similar to half the houses in the street, or in this part of the town for that matter.  Yet with all this crowding and renting of rooms Mrs. Phillips did not grow rich.  She was always getting into debt or getting out of it, this depending in inverse ratio upon Joe being in work or out.

When the rooms were all let they barely paid the rent and were always getting empty.  The five children—­they had one dead and another coming—­ate so much and made so much work.  There were boots and clothes and groceries to pay for, not to mention bread.  And though Joe was not like many a woman’s husband yet he did get on the spree occasionally, a little fact which in the opinion of the pious will account for all Mrs. Phillips’ weariness and all the poverty of this crowded house.  But however that may be she was a weary hopeless faded woman, who would not cause passers-by to turn, pity-stricken, and watch her when she hurried along on her semi-occasional escapes from her prison-house only because such women are so common that it is those who do not look hopeless and weary whom we turn to watch if by some strange chance one passes.  The Phillips’ kitchen was a cheerless place, in spite of the mirror that was installed in state over the side-board and the wax flowers.  Its one window looked upon a diminutive back yard, a low broken wall and another row of similar two-storied houses.  On the plastered walls were some shelves bearing a limited supply of crockery.  Over the grated fireplace was a long high shelf whereon stood various pots and bottles.  There were some chairs and a table and a Chinese-made safe.  On the boarded floor was a remnant of linoleum.  Against one wall was a narrow staircase.

It was the breakfast things that Nellie had been helping to wash up.  The little American clock on the sideboard indicated quarter past nine.

Nellie went to the front door, opened it, and stood looking out.  The view was a limited one, a short narrow side street, blinded at one end by a high bare stone wall, bounded at the other by the almost as narrow by-thoroughfare this side street branched from.  The houses in the thoroughfare were three-storied, and a number wore used as shops of the huckstering variety, mainly by Chinese.  The houses in the