Mr. Fink sprang to his feet—­Maggie caught him again on the jaw with a wide swing of her other hand.  She closed her eyes in that fearful, blissful moment before his blow should come—­she whispered his name to herself—­she leaned to the expected shock, hungry for it.

In the flat below Mr. Cassidy, with a shamed and contrite face was powdering Mame’s eye in preparation for their junket.  From the flat above came the sound of a woman’s voice, high-raised, a bumping, a stumbling and a shuffling, a chair overturned—­unmistakable sounds of domestic conflict.

“Mart and Mag scrapping?” postulated Mr. Cassidy.  “Didn’t know they ever indulged.  Shall I trot up and see if they need a sponge holder?”

One of Mrs. Cassidy’s eyes sparkled like a diamond.  The other twinkled at least like paste.

“Oh, oh,” she said, softly and without apparent meaning, in the feminine ejaculatory manner.  “I wonder if—­wonder if!  Wait, Jack, till I go up and see.”

Up the stairs she sped.  As her foot struck the hallway above out from the kitchen door of her flat wildly flounced Mrs. Fink.

“Oh, Maggie,” cried Mrs. Cassidy, in a delighted whisper; “did he?  Oh, did he?”

Mrs. Fink ran and laid her face upon her chum’s shoulder and sobbed hopelessly.

Mrs. Cassidy took Maggie’s face between her hands and lifted it gently.  Tear-stained it was, flushing and paling, but its velvety, pink-and-white, becomingly freckled surface was unscratched, unbruised, unmarred by the recreant fist of Mr. Fink.

“Tell me, Maggie,” pleaded Mame, “or I’ll go in there and find out.  What was it?  Did he hurt you—­what did he do?”

Mrs. Fink’s face went down again despairingly on the bosom of her friend.

“For God’s sake don’t open that door, Mame,” she sobbed.  “And don’t ever tell nobody—­keep it under your hat.  He—­he never touched me, and—­he’s—­oh, Gawd—­he’s washin’ the clothes—­he’s washin’ the clothes!”

“The guilty party”

A Red-haired, unshaven, untidy man sat in a rocking chair by a window.  He had just lighted a pipe, and was puffing blue clouds with great satisfaction.  He had removed his shoes and donned a pair of blue, faded carpet-slippers.  With the morbid thirst of the confirmed daily news drinker, he awkwardly folded back the pages of an evening paper, eagerly gulping down the strong, black headlines, to be followed as a chaser by the milder details of the smaller type.

In an adjoining room a woman was cooking supper.  Odors from strong bacon and boiling coffee contended against the cut-plug fumes from the vespertine pipe.

Outside was one of those crowded streets of the east side, in which, as twilight falls, Satan sets up his recruiting office.  A mighty host of children danced and ran and played in the street.  Some in rags, some in clean white and beribboned, some wild and restless as young hawks, some gentle-faced and shrinking, some shrieking rude and sinful words, some listening, awed, but soon, grown familiar, to embrace—­here were the children playing in the corridors of the House of Sin.  Above the playground forever hovered a great bird.  The bird was known to humorists as the stork.  But the people of Chrystie street were better ornithologists.  They called it a vulture.