ed the narrow and dark stairways she saw the plan of the house.
Four apartments opened upon each landing, in which was the common hydrant
and sink. The Mulhaus apartment consisted of a room large enough to
contain a bed, a cook-stove, a bureau, a rocking-chair, and two other
chairs, and it had two small windows, which would have more freely
admitted the southern sun if they had been washed, and a room adjoining,
dark, and nearly filled by a big bed. 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 bo