The residence of Karl Mulhaus, one of the doctor’s patients, was typical of the homes of the better class of poor.  The apartment fronted on a small and not too cleanly court, and was in the third story.  As Edith mounted the narrow and dark stairways she saw the plan of the house.  Four apartments opened upon each landing, in which was the common hydrant and sink.  The Mulhaus apartment consisted of a room large enough to contain a bed, a cook-stove, a bureau, a rocking-chair, and two other chairs, and it had two small windows, which would have more freely admitted the southern sun if they had been washed, and a room adjoining, dark, and nearly filled by a big bed.  On the walls of the living room were hung highly colored advertising chromos of steamships and palaces of industry, and on the bureau Edith noticed two illustrated newspapers of the last year, a patent-medicine almanac, and a volume of Schiller.  The bureau also held Mr. Mulhaus’s bottles of medicine, a comb which needed a dentist, and a broken hair-brush.  What gave the room, however, a cheerful aspect were some pots of plants on the window-ledges, and half a dozen canary-bird cages hung wherever there was room for them.

None of the family happened to be at home except Mr. Mulhaus, who occupied the rocking-chair, and two children, a girl of four years and a boy of eight, who were on the floor playing “store” with some blocks of wood, a few tacks, some lumps of coal, some scraps of paper, and a tangle of twine.  In their prattle they spoke, the English they had learned from their brother who was in a store.

“I feel some better today,” said Mr. Mulhaus, brightening up as the visitors entered, “but the cough hangs on.  It’s three months since this weather that I haven’t been out, but the birds are a good deal of company.”  He spoke in German, and with effort.  He was very thin and sallow, and his large feverish eyes added to the pitiful look of his refined face.  The doctor explained to Edith that he had been getting fair wages in a type-foundry until he had become too weak to go any longer to the shop.

It was rather hard to have to sit there all day, he explained to the doctor, but they were getting along.  Mrs. Mulhaus had got a job of cleaning that day; that would be fifty cents.  Ally—­she was twelve—­was learning to sew.  That was her afternoon to go to the College Settlement.  Jimmy, fourteen, had got a place in a store, and earned two dollars a week.

“And Vicky?” asked the doctor.

“Oh, Vicky,” piped up the eight-year-old boy.  “Vicky’s up to the ’stution”—­the hospital was probably the institution referred to—­“ever so long now.  I seen her there, me and Jim did.  Such a bootifer place!  ’Nd chicken!” he added.  “Sis got hurt by a cart.”

Vicky was seventeen, and had been in a fancy store.

“Yes,” said Mulhaus, in reply to a question, “it pays pretty well raising canaries, when they turn out singers.  I made fifteen dollars last year.  I hain’t sold much lately.  Seems ’s if people stopped wanting ’em such weather.  I guess it ’ll be better in the spring.”