ek.

The next day Sarah showed Schulenberg a neat card on which the menu was
beautifully typewritten with the viands temptingly marshalled under
their right and proper heads from "hors d'oeuvre" to "not responsible
for overcoats and umbrellas."

Schulenberg became a naturalised citizen on the spot. Before Sarah left
him she had him willingly committed to an agreement. She was to furnish
typewritten bills of fare for the twenty-one tables in the restaurant--a
new bill for each day's dinner, and new ones for breakfast and lunch as
often as changes occurred in the food or as neatness required.

In return for this Schulenberg was to send three meals per diem to
Sarah's hall room by a waiter--an obsequious one if possible--and
furnish her each afternoon with a pencil draft of what Fate had in
store for Schulenberg's customers on the morrow.

Mutual satisfaction resulted from the agreement. Schulenberg's patrons
now knew what the food they ate was called even if its nature sometimes
puzzled them. And Sarah had food during a cold, dull winter, which was
the main thing with her.

And then the almanac lied, and said that spring had come. Spring comes
when it comes. The frozen snows of January still lay like adamant in
the crosstown streets. The hand-organs still played "In the Good Old
Summertime," with their December vivacity and expression. Men began to
make thirty-day notes to buy Easter dresses. Janitors shut off steam.
And when these things happen one may know that the city is still in the
clutches of winter.

One afternoon Sarah shivered in her elegant hall bedroom; "house heated;
scrupulously clean; conveniences; seen to be appreciated." She had no
work to do except Schulenberg's menu cards. Sarah sat in her squeaky
willow rocker, and looked out the window. The calendar on the wall kept
crying to her: "Springtime is here, Sarah--springtime is here, I tell
you. Look at me, Sarah, my figures show it. You've got a neat figure
yourself, Sarah--a--nice springtime figure--why do you look out the
window so sadly?"

Sarah's room was at the back of the house. Looking out the window she
could see the windowless rear brick wall of the box factory on the next
street. But the wall was clearest crystal; and Sarah was looking down a
grassy lane shaded with cherry trees and elms and bordered with
raspberry bushes and Cherokee roses.

Spring's real harbingers are too subtle for the eye and ear. Some must
have the flowering crocu