“Good old Nelly!” said Courtland, with a sigh, handing the letter over to Pat, for these two shared everything these days.

Courtland stood staring out of the window at the vista of roofs and tall chimneys.  The blistering summer sun simmered hot and sickening over the city.  Red brick and dust and grime were all around him.  His soul was weary of the sight and faltered in its way.  What was the use of living?  What?

Then suddenly he straightened up and leaned from the window alertly!  The fire alarm was sounding.  Its sinister wheeze shrilled through the hot air tauntingly!  It sounded again.  One! two!  One! two! three!  It was in the neighborhood.

Without waiting for a word, both men sprang out the door and down the stairs.

CHAPTER XXIX

“The Whited Sepulcher,” as some of the bitterest of her poorly paid slaves called the model factory, stood coolly, insolently, among her dirty, red-brick, grime-stained neighbors; like some dainty lady appareled in sheer muslins and jewels appearing on the threshold of the hot kitchen where her servitors were sweating and toiling to prepare her a feast.

The luxuriant vines were green and abundant, creeping coolly about the white walls, befringing the windows charmingly, laying delicate clinging fingers even up to the very eaves, and straying out over the roof.  No matter how parched the ground in the little parks of the district, no matter how yellow the leaves on the few stunted trees near by, no matter how low the city’s supply of water, nor how many public fountains had to be temporarily shut off, that vine was always well watered.  Its root lay deep in soft, moist earth well fertilized and cared for; its leaves were washed anew each evening with refreshing spray from the hose that played over it.  “Seems like I’d just like to lie down there and sleep with my face clost up to it, all wet and cool-like, all night!” sighed one poor little bony victim of a girl, scarcely more than a child, as the throng pressed out the wide door at six o’clock and caught the moist fragrance of the damp earth and growing vine.

“You look all in, Susie!” said her neighbor, pausing in her interminable gum-chewing to eye her friend keenly.  “Say, you better go with me to the movies to-night!  I know a nice cool one fer a nickel!”

“Can’t!” sighed Susie. “’Ain’t got ther nickel, and, besides, I gotta stay with gran’mom while ma goes up with some vests she’s been makin’.  Oh, I’m all right!  I jus’ was thinkin’ about the vine; it looks so cool and purty.  Say, Katie, it’s somepin’ to b’long to a vine like that, even if we do have it rotten sometimes!  Don’t you always feel kinda proud-like when you come in the door, ’most as if it was a palace?  I like to pertend it’s all a great big house where I live, and there’s carpets and lace curtings to the winders, and a real gold sofy with pink-velvet cushings!  And when I come down and see one of the company’s ottymobiles standin’ by the curb waitin’, I like to pertend it’s mine, only I don’t ride ‘cause I’ve been ridin’ so much I’d ruther walk!  Don’t you ever do that, Katie?”