ing
with lace frills, led by a trained nurse in a grey and white uniform.
They were actually being let out of the lift, which had swooped down
with appalling swiftness, by a man in livery.

"Good Heavens," I exclaimed, "what a queer place for a child and its
nurse to be in."

"My dear girl, they live there," said Mrs. Ess Kay rather scornfully.
"That is Mrs. Harvey Richmount Taylour's little Rosemary with her
nurse."

"People live on top of those poles like Jack in a beanstalk!" I
exclaimed. "How appalling."

As I looked through the hallway up sprang the lift once more, fierce
and swift as one of the rockets which I used as a child to be afraid
might strike the angels. A minute of suspense and it swooped down again
with two girls in it. I felt as if it were a thing I oughtn't to be
seeing somehow; it was so much like spying on the digestive apparatus
of a skeleton.

"You see," explained Mrs. Ess Kay, "the Taylours and other people were
frightfully anxious to get in. The rest of the building will be
finished soon, and this is going to be one of the swellest apartment
houses in New York."

"This an apartment house!" cried I, thinking of the dull streets in
London, where almost every door has "Apartments" printed over it in
gilt letters, or else hanging crooked and dejected on a card. "But,
oh--perhaps you mean it's _flats_."

"For goodness sake, don't say 'flats' to Margaret Taylour," exclaimed
Mrs. Ess Kay, marshalling me into the mammoth skeleton. "Over here,
only common people live in flats; our sort have 'apartments.'"

"It's just the other way round with us," I explained. "Those who have
flats would be furious if you said they lived in apartments."

"You English are so quaint in some ways," remarked Mrs. Ess Kay, and
though I didn't answer, I was surprised. It's all well enough for us to
think Americans odd, and we are accustomed to that, for everybody says
they are; but that they should think _our_ ways comic does seem
extraordinary, almost improper.

By this time we were in the lift, which shut upon us with a vicious
snap, and then tossed us up towards the roof of the world. I do hope
one doesn't experience the same sensation in dying; though in that case
it would be worse going down than up.

Before I had time to do more than gasp, we were at the top; and as we
waited for an instant outside Mrs. Harvey Richmount Taylour's door, I
should have liked to pinch my cheeks lest my fright had left me pale.