e room (a matter of six steps), removing hairpins as she went,
and shoved aside the screen which hid the stationary wash-bowl by day.

Mary Louise turned on a faucet and held her finger under it, while an
agonized expression of doubt and suspense overspread her features.
Slowly the look of suspense gave way to a smile of beatific content. A
sigh--deep, soul-filling, satisfied--welled up from Mary Louise's breast.
The water was hot.

Half an hour later, head swathed turban fashion in a towel, Mary Louise
strolled over to the window. Then she stopped, aghast. In that half
hour the sun had slipped just around the corner, and was now beating
brightly and uselessly against the brick wall a few inches away. Slowly
Mary Louise unwound the towel, bent double in the contortionistic
attitude that women assume on such occasions, and watched with melancholy
eyes while the drops trickled down to the ends of her hair, and fell,
unsunned, to the floor.

"If only," thought Mary Louise, bitterly, "there was such a thing as a
back yard in this city--a back yard where I could squat on the grass, in
the sunshine and the breeze---- Maybe there is. I'll ask the janitor."

She bound her hair in the turban again, and opened the door. At the far
end of the long, dim hallway Charlie, the janitor, was doing something to
the floor with a mop and a great deal of sloppy water, whistling the
while with a shrill abandon that had announced his presence to Mary
Louise.

"Oh, Charlie!" called Mary Louise. "Charlee! Can you come here just a
minute?"

"You bet!" answered Charlie, with the accent on the you; and came.

"Charlie, is there a back yard, or something, where the sun is, you
know--some nice, grassy place where I can sit, and dry my hair, and let
the breezes blow it?"

"Back yard!" grinned Charlie. "I guess you're new to N' York, all right,
with ground costin' a million or so a foot. Not much they ain't no back
yard, unless you'd give that name to an ash-barrel, and a dump heap or
so, and a crop of tin cans. I wouldn't invite a goat to set in it."

Disappointment curved Mary Louise's mouth. It was a lovely enough mouth
at any time, but when it curved in disappointment--ell, janitors are but
human, after all.

"Tell you what, though," said Charlie. "I'll let you up on the roof. It
ain't long on grassy spots up there, but say, breeze! Like a summer
resort. On a clear day you can see way over 's far 's Eight' Avenoo.
Only