He would continue his nightly search—­and he had not missed a single evening—­but he would return earlier, so as to be able to spend an hour reading to Masie before she went to bed, or with his other friends and acquaintances of “The Avenue”—­especially with Kitty and John.  He had been too unmindful of them, getting back to his lodgings at any hour of the night, either to let himself in by his pass-key—­all the lights out and everybody asleep—­or to find only Kitty or John, or both, at work over their accounts or waiting up for Mike or Bobby or for one of their wagons detained on some dock.  And since Kling had raised his salary, enabling him not only to recover his dressing-case, which then rested on his mantel, but to take his meals wherever he happened to be at the moment—­he had seldom dined at home—­a great relief in many ways to a man of his tastes.

Kitty, though he did not know it, had demurred and had talked the matter over with John, wondering whether she had neglected his comfort.  When she had questioned him, he had settled it with a pat on her shoulders.  “Just let me have my way this time, my dear Mrs. Cleary,” he had said gently but firmly.  “I am a bad boarder and cause you no end of trouble, for I am never on time.  And please keep the price as it is, for I don’t pay you half enough for all your goodness to me.”

Now under the impulse of his new resolution, and rather ashamed of his former attitude in view of all her unremitting attentions, he resumed his place at her table.  Nor did he stop here.  He taught her to broil a chop over her coal fire by removing the stove lid—­until then they had been fried—­and a new way with a rasher of bacon, using the carving-fork instead of a pan.  The clearing of the famous coffee-pot with an egg—­making the steaming mixture anew whenever wanted instead of letting the dented old pot simmer away all day on the back of the stove—­ was another innovation, making the evening meal just that much more enjoyable, greatly to the delight of the hostess, who was prouder of her boarder than of any other human being who had come into her life, except John and Bobby.

These renewed intimacies opened his eyes to another phase of the life about him, and he soon found himself growing daily more interested in the sweet family relations of the small household.

“What do I care for what we haven’t got,” Kitty said to him one night when some economies in the small household were being discussed.  “I’m better off than half the women who stop at my door in their carriages.  I got two arms, and I can sleep eight hours when I get the chance, and John loves me and so does Bobby and so does my big white horse Jim.  There ain’t one of them women as knows what it is to work for her man and him to work for her.”  All the other married couples he had seen had pulled apart, or lived apart—­mentally, at least.  These two seemed bound together heart and soul.

More than once he contrived to stop at the Studio Building, where both of the old fellows were almost always to be found sitting side by side, and, picking them up bodily, he had set them down on hard chairs in a rathskeller on Sixth Avenue, where they had all dined together, the old fellows warmed up with two beers apiece.  This done, he had escorted them back, seen them safely up-stairs, and returned to his lodgings.