As he reached the sidewalk and got a clearer view of the vine, tracing the weave of its interlaced branches and tendrils, Masie noticed that he stopped suddenly and for a moment looked away, lost in deep thought.  She caught, too, the shadow that sometimes settled on his face, one she had seen before and wondered over.  But although her hand was still in his, she kept silent until he spoke.

“Look, dear Masie,” he said at last, drawing her to him, “see what happens to those who are forced into traps!  It was the big knot that held it back!  And yet it grew on!”

Masie looked up into his thoughtful face.  “Do you think the iron hurts it, Uncle Felix?” she asked with a sigh.

“I shouldn’t wonder; it would me,” he faltered.

“But it wasn’t the vine’s fault, was it?”

“Perhaps not.  Maybe when it was planted nobody looked after it, nor cared what might happen when it grew up.  Poor wistaria!  Come along, darling!”

At last they turned into 10th Street, Fudge scurrying ahead to the very door of the grim building, where a final dash brought him to Ganger’s, his nose having sniffed at every threshold they passed and into every crack and corner of the three flights of stairs.

Felix’s own nostrils were now dilating with pleasure.  The odor of varnish and turpentine had brought back some old memories—­as perfumes do for us all.  A crumpled glove, a bunch of withered roses, the salt breath of an outlying marsh, are often but so many fairy wands reviving comedies and tragedies on which the curtains of forgetfulness have been rung down these many years.

Something in the aroma of the place was recalling kindred spirits across the sea, when the door was swung wide and Ganger in a big, hearty voice, cried: 

“Mr. O’Day, is it?  Oh, I am glad!  And that dear child, and—­ Hello! who invited you, you restless little devil of a dog?  Come in, all of you!  I’ve a model, but she doesn’t care and neither do I. And this, Mr. O’Day, is my old friend, Sam Dogger—­and he’s no relation of yours, you imp!”—­with a bob of his grizzled head at Fudge—­“He’s a landscape-painter and a good one—­ one of those Hudson River fellows—­and would be a fine one if he would stick to it.  Give me that hat and coat, my chick-a-biddy, and I’ll hang them up.  And now here’s a chair for you, Mr. O’Day, and please get into it—­and there’s a jar full of tobacco, and if you haven’t got a pipe of your own you’ll find a whole lot of corncobs on the mantelpiece and you can help yourself.”

O’Day had stood smiling at the painter, Masie’s hand fast in his, Fudge tiptoeing softly about, divided between a sense of the strangeness of the place and a certainty of mice behind the canvases.  Felix knew the old fellow’s kind, and recognized the note of attempted gayety in the voice—­the bravado of the poor putting their best, sometimes their only, foot foremost.