On the walls of the living room
were hung highly colored advertising chromos of steamships and palaces
of industry, and on the bureau Edith noticed two illustrated newspapers
of the last year, a patent-medicine almanac, and a volume of Schiller.
The bureau also held Mr. Mulhaus's bottles of medicine, a comb which
needed a dentist, and a broken hair-brush. What gave the room, however,
a cheerful aspect were some pots of plants on the window-ledges, and
half a dozen canary-bird cages hung wherever there was room for them.

None of the family happened to be at home except Mr. Mulhaus, who
occupied the rocking-chair, and two children, a girl of four years and a
boy of eight, who were on the floor playing "store" with some blocks
of wood, a few tacks, some lumps of coal, some scraps of paper, and
a tangle of twine. In their prattle they spoke, the English they had
learned from their brother who was in a store.

"I feel some better today," said Mr. Mulhaus, brightening up as the
visitors entered, "but the cough hangs on. It's three months since
this weather that I haven't been out, but the birds are a good deal
of company." He spoke in German, and with effort. He was very thin and
sallow, and his large feverish eyes added to the pitiful look of his
refined face. The doctor explained to Edith that he had been getting
fair wages in a type-foundry until he had become too weak to go any
longer to the shop.

It was rather hard to have to sit there all day, he explained to the
doctor, but they were getting along. Mrs. Mulhaus had got a job of
cleaning that day; that would be fifty cents. Ally--she was twelve--was
learning to sew. That was her afternoon to go to the College Settlement.
Jimmy, fourteen, had got a place in a store, and earned two dollars a
week.

"And Vicky?" asked the doctor.

"Oh, Vicky," piped up the eight-year-old boy. "Vicky's up to the
'stution"--the hospital was probably the institution referred to--"ever
so long now. I seen her there, me and Jim did. Such a bootifer place!
'Nd chicken!" he added. "Sis got hurt by a cart."

Vicky was seventeen, and had been in a fancy store.

"Yes," said Mulhaus, in reply to a question, "it pays pretty well
raising canaries, when they turn out singers. I made fifteen dollars
last year. I hain't sold much lately. Seems 's if people stopped wanting
'em such weather. I guess it 'll be better in the spring."

"No doubt it will be better for the poor fellow himself before