“Give that letter to the lady,” he said, “and ask her to read it.  Tell her that it should explain the situation.  Tell her that, if she had mingled a little trust with her conception of the ideal, much heartache might have been avoided.  Tell her that the loyalty she prizes so much has never wavered.  Tell her I am waiting for an answer.”

The messenger stood before the lady.

“De gent says he’s had de ski-bunk put on him widout no cause.  He says he’s no bum guy; and, lady, yer read dat letter, and I’ll bet yer he’s a white sport, all right.”

The young lady unfolded the letter; somewhat doubtfully, and read it.

DEAR DR. ARNOLD:  I want to thank you for your most kind and opportune aid to my daughter last Friday evening, when she was overcome by an attack of her old heart-trouble in the conservatory at Mrs. Waldron’s reception.  Had you not been near to catch her as she fell and to render proper attention, we might have lost her.  I would be glad if you would call and undertake the treatment of her case.  Gratefully yours, ROBERT ASHBURTON.

The young lady refolded the letter, and handed it to the boy.

“De gent wants an answer,” said the messenger.  “Wot’s de word?”

The lady’s eyes suddenly flashed on him, bright, smiling and wet.

“Tell that guy on the other bench,” she said, with a happy, tremulous laugh, “that his girl wants him.”

THE FURNISHED ROOM

Restless, shifting, fugacious as time itself is a certain vast bulk of the population of the red brick district of the lower West Side.  Homeless, they have a hundred homes.  They flit from furnished room to furnished room, transients forever—­transients in abode, transients in heart and mind.  They sing “Home, Sweet Home” in ragtime; they carry their lares et penates in a bandbox; their vine is entwined about a picture hat; a rubber plant is their fig tree.

Hence the houses of this district, having had a thousand dwellers, should have a thousand tales to tell, mostly dull ones, no doubt; but it would be strange if there could not be found a ghost or two in the wake of all these vagrant guests.

One evening after dark a young man prowled among these crumbling red mansions, ringing their bells.  At the twelfth he rested his lean hand-baggage upon the step and wiped the dust from his hatband and forehead.  The bell sounded faint and far away in some remote, hollow depths.

To the door of this, the twelfth house whose bell he had rung, came a housekeeper who made him think of an unwholesome, surfeited worm that had eaten its nut to a hollow shell and now sought to fill the vacancy with edible lodgers.

He asked if there was a room to let.

“Come in,” said the housekeeper.  Her voice came from her throat; her throat seemed lined with fur.  “I have the third floor back, vacant since a week back.  Should you wish to look at it?”