"Rooms and board," was the answer.
"Very well. I'm coming right down."
The landlady proved to be a cheery, bustling little body about thirty-five years of age. Her eyes were blue, her hair chestnut. She bestowed a smile on the applicants that at once put them at ease.
"Yes, I happen to have two rooms at the top," she said, eying Dora's attire with a woman's natural curiosity. "They are three flights up; I have no others right now. My house is usually full at all seasons. You see, I have many stand-by's; people who have been here for years call it home. If you want to see the rooms you can leave your things here for a while."
Leaving Dora below, John accompanied the landlady to the rooms above. On seeing them he was satisfied that they would do. They were in the rear.
One was quite large, and, in the crude estimation of the brick-mason, rather well furnished, for it held a massive walnut bureau with a marble top and wide mirror lighted on both sides by globed gas-jets, one of which was pink, the other frosted white. There was a big rosewood sofa against a wall, also a rocking-chair, a center-table, a wide walnut bedstead, and an ample alcove containing running water, and a basin and towels. The other was the typical hall room with a narrow iron bed, a chair, a wash-stand, a rug, a row of hooks on the wall for clothing over which hung a calico dust-curtain, and a single window.
"I suppose this might do for the little girl," suggested Mrs. McGwire, affably. "Children don't need much room. She is a relative, I presume?"
"My sister. We are orphans," John said, casually enough, considering the unlooked-for demand on his resources. "My sister Dora. But I would want her to have the other room. I can bunk anywhere. I want to put her into the public school here, and she ought to have a cheerful place to study in at night and sit in through the day. I shall be away at work."
"Fine, fine! I like that in you." Mrs. McGwire smiled affably. "I'm a widow with three children to bring up (that is why I am running this house) and I certainly appreciate such consideration for a child as you show. I have a boy of thirteen, a girl of eleven, and another of eight.
If you stay here the older ones, Harold and Betty, might be able to help start your sister out on her studies."
"That would be nice," John responded. "She is a country girl and never has been to school at all."
Just here a rather tall, slender boy with the face of a student opened the door of a room at the far end of the passage and came forward.
"This is my big son," Mrs. McGwire said, smiling. "This is Harold. The doctor says he studies too hard, but I simply can't make him stop it."
The lad smiled politely, put his arm about his mother's waist, and said: "Somebody has taken my concordance. I left it with my other books, and it is gone."
"Oh, I forgot," Mrs. McGwire said, indulgently. "Mr. King (he is our minister)"--this last to John. "He was looking over your books this morning and he took it down to the parlor with him. It is there."
"Thank you, mother," the boy said, and went down the stairs.
"I'm very proud of my son," Mrs. McGwire said, looking after the boy with beaming eyes. "He really has a remarkable mind. Young as he is, he has already decided to be a preacher. He has read the Bible through twice, and can quote any passage you mention. He is the leader of Mr.
King's big Bible class. His father was a minister, and it has been my daily prayer that Harold would go into the same work."
Ten dollars a week for the rooms and board for two was the price agreed on, and John went down with Mrs McGwire to inform Dora of the arrangement.
"I needn't ask your name," Mrs. McGwire said, smiling, as he picked up the valises, "for I see it on your bag. John Trott is short and plain enough."
John blinked. He had really thought seriously of changing his name, but it was too late now; besides, what did it matter? He nodded. "Yes," he said, looking at the letters on the valise. "A friend of mine, a sign-painter, made me a present of this last Christmas, and he lettered it himself."
Dora liked the spacious room very much, and it did not occur to her just then to compare it to John's, as she hastily removed her few belongings from his bags, and hung or laid them about the room.
After supper John went out to buy some tobacco, and when he returned he found Dora in her room, most timidly entertaining Betty and Minnie McGwire. Dora did not introduce her guests, and Betty rather gracefully did it herself. She was an affable talker, a rather slim, gawky blonde, while Minnie was a stocky brunette with heavy, dark brows and black hair that was too coarse and wiry to be easily controlled.
"Betty's going to dress my doll," Dora informed him. "She has got lots and lots of doll-things packed away, and Minnie has the cutest doll-house you ever saw. It is full of tables and chairs and dishes and even closets to hang things in. Could you show it to him, Minnie?"
"Sure," answered the child addressed. "I'll go get it."
"No, not to-night," John interposed. "Some other time."
Leaving the children, he turned into his cheerless room and lighted the gas. He unpacked the valises and hung up some of his apparel under the dust-curtain. There were his working-shirts, his overalls, his coarse cap and stoggy shoes. He had bought an evening paper and he opened it out to read it, but could not fix his attention even on the boldest of the head-lines. Ridgeville, the cottage, Tilly, floated through his mind, and a pain that was both physical and mental clutched his whole being. He winced, ground his teeth together, and stifled a groan.
"It is my damned yellow streak!" he muttered. "I must get over it--kill it, pull it out by the roots. Why shouldn't I have my share of bad luck? Others have plenty of it--even women and children. Poof! Be a man, John Trott. Don't be a dirty shirker!"
A merry ripple of laughter came from the adjoining room, and he heard Dora telling of the mistake she had made on the street in Washington, and somehow he felt relieved. Surely good would come out of the plunge he had made into those unknown waters, dark and deep as they seemed.
Wasn't Dora already better off? And what more could he desire than to benefit a child like that materially and lastingly?
But the pain still clung and permeated. He heard the two visitors bidding good night to Dora, and when they had gone down-stairs he went into the other room, finding the child with her doll in her arms, rocking it as a mother might a living babe.
"Now get to bed, Sis," he said, more tenderly than he had ever spoken to her before. "Do you like it here?"
"Oh, very, very much!" she cried, enthusiastically. "Betty and Minnie are the sweetest and best children I ever saw, and Harold is nice, too--nice and polite, and awfully smart. He uses big words that I never heard before. The girls want me to go with them to their school and church. May I?"
"Yes," he returned. "Now get to bed. Sleep as late as you want to in the morning. You don't have to get up before day to cook breakfast for me now, eh?"
She smiled happily, but said nothing.
He yearned to kiss her, for through her companionship in his loneliness she had become very dear to him, but that strode him as being a weak thing for a man to do, and he left her without yielding to the impulse.
The air in his cell-like room was rather close, and he did not go to sleep readily. There were so many things to think about--the work he had to find as soon as possible, the clothes that must be bought for Dora, for he wanted her to dress as well as her new friends. He decided to ask Mrs. McGwire to help him make those purchases. As for the work, he was sure he could find a job at good wages, for he had already looked over the "Help wanted" advertisements in a morning paper and written down the addresses of several firms of contractors and builders who were in need of skilled labor.
After a long while he fell asleep, and when he waked in the morning he heard Dora moving about in her room.
"Kid!" he called out, "come here!"
"All right, brother John," she answered, and he was sure that he heard her tittering in a suppressed way. Wondering what could be the cause of her merriment so early in the day, he called out again. This time she answered with a rippling laugh: "Wait a minute, can't you?"
Ten minutes passed, and then she appeared in the doorway. She had on a really attractive blue-serge suit that fitted her quite well. Indeed, with her hair arranged as Betty McGwire wore hers, she looked like some strange, new little girl who bore but a slight resemblance to the unkempt Dora he had known from her babyhood.
"I was going to surprise you," she said, laughing freely over his stare of astonishment. "It is a dress that was too small for Betty and too big for Minnie. Mrs. McGwire gave it to me last night while you were out.
She has two or three others which she says will be out of style before Minnie comes on, and will go to the ragman if I don't take them."
"It looks all right," John said, admiringly. "It will do till we can get some new ones."
CHAPTER XXXVIII
His mind greatly relieved by having such good custodians for Dora, John fared forth immediately after breakfast in search of work. No one could possibly have been more ignorant of the intricate ways of the great city than he, and yet he managed to find the office of the first advertiser on his list without overmuch delay or difficulty.
"Pilcher & Reed, Contractors and Builders," as their sign read, had their offices over a carpenter's shop in East Thirty-third Street near the river. The house was a red-brick structure which in former days had been a residence. The contractors occupied all of the second floor, the two floors above being used by certain Jewish makers of shirt-waists and skirts, and an Italian establishment for the dry-cleaning of clothing.
Mr. Reed, the junior member of the firm, was in the main office, a large square room with two windows, the walls of which were hung with framed photographs of buildings the firm had constructed and maps of the city's streets. He was standing at a flat-top desk which was covered with blue-prints, drawings, and sheets of paper filled with figures and diagrams, and as John entered he turned and shook hands with him. He had a broad face, was of middle age, and decidedly bald. He had a cordial manner, and when he detected, from John's pronunciation, that he was Southern, he smiled agreeably.
"I went down into North Carolina with a lumber concern ten years ago,"
he said. "We roughed it in the mountains getting out timber, and had a splendid time. I often wish I had kept at it. This indoor grind is taking the life out of me. I seldom see the sun. Brick-mason, eh? Well, the manager of our brick-and-stone work is in the rear office now, talking to some applicants. Member of the union?"
"No, not yet," John answered. "But I'm going to join."