articular. He dismissed the matter from his mind. But by the
time he had taken off his ties, which were a trifle too narrow in the
toes to be comfortable, he had somehow returned to his first resolution
to set Miss Callender right in the matter if he should have
opportunity.

VIII.

IN AVENUE C.

If Phillida could have known the thoughts that occupied the mind of
Millard on Sunday afternoon, two or three weeks later, as he started for
his monthly visit in Avenue C, she would not have judged his purposes in
life severely. His walk lay through a cross-street which steadily
deteriorated as he journeyed eastward, condescendingly assimilating
itself to the character of each avenue in turn. Beer saloons, cheap
grocery stores, carts against the curbstones with their shafts pointing
skyward, and troops of children on the sidewalk, marked the increasing
poverty and density of the population. Millard wondered at the display
of trinkets and confectionery in the shop-windows, not knowing that
those whose backs are cheaply clad crave ornaments, and those whose
bellies lack bread are ravenous for luxuries.

Being a fastidious man and for years accustomed to the refinements of
life, he exaggerated the discomforts of tenement-house living. How
people endured such misery and yet seemed so cheerful he could not
imagine. And though he did not feel that diffusive benevolence which
prompted Phillida to try to ameliorate the moral condition of such of
this mass as she could reach, he had a strong desire to lift his aunt
and her children to a little higher plane. To this, hitherto, he had
found an obstacle in the pride of her husband. Henry Martin was a
tinsmith who had come to the city to work in a great factory for a
little higher wages than he could get as a journeyman tinker in a
country town. He did not refuse to let the children accept presents from
"Cousin Charley," but he was not willing "to be beholden to any of his
wife's folks," as he expressed it. He resented the fact that even in
Cappadocia he had been somewhat outstripped by his brother-in-law,
Charles Millard's father, and when the "Millard boys" had inherited
money from their father's brother, and Martin saw their mother, his
wife's sister, living in a style to which he could never hope to lift
his own family, it weighed on his mind, and this offense to his pride
had helped to fix his resolution in favor of a removal to New York.

During the walk eastward Millard