But Mr. McCaskey was no 50-cent table d’hoter.  Let cheap Bohemians consider coffee the end, if they would.  Let them make that faux pas.  He was foxier still.  Finger-bowls were not beyond the compass of his experience.  They were not to be had in the Pension Murphy; but their equivalent was at hand.  Triumphantly he sent the granite-ware wash basin at the head of his matrimonial adversary.  Mrs. McCaskey dodged in time.  She reached for a flatiron, with which, as a sort of cordial, she hoped to bring the gastronomical duel to a close.  But a loud, wailing scream downstairs caused both her and Mr. McCaskey to pause in a sort of involuntary armistice.

On the sidewalk at the corner of the house Policeman Cleary was standing with one ear upturned, listening to the crash of household utensils.

“’Tis Jawn McCaskey and his missis at it again,” meditated the policeman.  “I wonder shall I go up and stop the row.  I will not.  Married folks they are; and few pleasures they have.  ’Twill not last long.  Sure, they’ll have to borrow more dishes to keep it up with.”

And just then came the loud scream below-stairs, betokening fear or dire extremity. “’Tis probably the cat,” said Policeman Cleary, and walked hastily in the other direction.

The boarders on the steps were fluttered.  Mr. Toomey, an insurance solicitor by birth and an investigator by profession, went inside to analyse the scream.  He returned with the news that Mrs. Murphy’s little boy, Mike, was lost.  Following the messenger, out bounced Mrs. Murphy—­two hundred pounds in tears and hysterics, clutching the air and howling to the sky for the loss of thirty pounds of freckles and mischief.  Bathos, truly; but Mr. Toomey sat down at the side of Miss Purdy, millinery, and their hands came together in sympathy.  The two old maids, Misses Walsh, who complained every day about the noise in the halls, inquired immediately if anybody had looked behind the clock.

Major Grigg, who sat by his fat wife on the top step, arose and buttoned his coat.  “The little one lost?” he exclaimed.  “I will scour the city.”  His wife never allowed him out after dark.  But now she said:  “Go, Ludovic!” in a baritone voice.  “Whoever can look upon that mother’s grief without springing to her relief has a heart of stone.”  “Give me some thirty or—­sixty cents, my love,” said the Major.  “Lost children sometimes stray far.  I may need carfares.”

Old man Denny, hall room, fourth floor back, who sat on the lowest step, trying to read a paper by the street lamp, turned over a page to follow up the article about the carpenters’ strike.  Mrs. Murphy shrieked to the moon:  “Oh, ar-r-Mike, f’r Gawd’s sake, where is me little bit av a boy?”

“When’d ye see him last?” asked old man Denny, with one eye on the report of the Building Trades League.

“Oh,” wailed Mrs. Murphy, “’twas yisterday, or maybe four hours ago!  I dunno.  But it’s lost he is, me little boy Mike.  He was playin’ on the sidewalk only this mornin’—­or was it Wednesday?  I’m that busy with work, ’tis hard to keep up with dates.  But I’ve looked the house over from top to cellar, and it’s gone he is.  Oh, for the love av Hiven—­”