e west side."

"As you please. I should have walked if alone," said Phillida.

"And I would much rather walk with good company than ride. So we will
walk."

It took them full three-quarters of an hour to reach Washington Square,
though either would have done it alone in a quarter less, for walking is
a kind of work that is not shortened when shared with a friend.

Millard purposely drew Miss Callender into talk about the work of the
mission, and he was soon rewarded by seeing her break through her
habitual restraint and reveal the enthusiastic self within. She told him
of the reading-room at the mission, and of the coffee-room where rolls
and hot coffee were served to men every day in the week, so as to keep
them from the saloons. Her face was aglow with interest as she talked,
but Millard would rather have drawn her to speak of her own relation to
the work. This she avoided, beyond confessing that she took her turn
with the other ladies in superintending the coffee-room. At length,
however, as they passed one of those open stairways that lead to
thronged tenements above,--like the entrance to a many-chambered
ant-hill, save that this mounts and that descends,--she spoke to a lad
on the sidewalk, telling him to give her love to his sister and say that
she was coming in to see her the next day. To Millard she explained
that the boy's sister was an invalid young woman on one of the upper
floors, bed-ridden for many years.

"And you visit her?" asked Millard, with a hardly concealed repulsion at
the notion of Phillida climbing these populous stairs and threading the
dingy and malodorous hallways above.

"Yes; she thinks so much of seeing me--because I am well, I suppose. She
says it makes her stronger just to look at me. And if I can take her a
flower, or some little bit of outdoors, it is more in her life than a
trip to the country would be in mine. Poor Wilhelmina Schulenberg has
not been down the stairs for five years. We talk of trying to get an
invalid's chair for her when the warm weather comes, so that her brother
can wheel her in the Square."

Millard turned and looked again at the stairway as though noticing all
the particulars of its environment. It was a balmy day in the last of
February, and they were soon crossing Tompkins Square diagonally towards
Eighth street. He had caught the infection of Phillida's exaltation;
instead of feeling repulsion at sight of the swarming children in cheap
and often shabb