in the very midst
of the block stood a queer wooden building with two rows of dormer
windows let into its high-pitched roof. It bore a curious resemblance to
a town hall in the low countries. In front of it the street was filled
with children gazing up at the doorway where a man stood surveying them
--the stranger from Silliston. There was a rush toward him, a rush that
drove Janet against the wall almost at his side, and he held up his hands
in mock despair, gently impeding the little bodies that strove to enter.
He bent over them to examine the numerals, printed on pasteboard, they
wore on their breasts. His voice was cheerful, yet compassionate.

"It's hard to wait, I know. I'm hungry myself," he said. "But we can't
all go up at once. The building would fall down! One to one hundred now,
and the second hundred will be first for supper. That's fair, isn't it?"

Dozens of hands were raised.

"I'm twenty-nine!"

"I'm three, mister!"

"I'm forty-one!"

He let them in, one by one, and they clattered up the stairs, as he
seized a tiny girl bundled in a dark red muffler and set her on the steps
above him. He smiled at Janet.

"This is my restaurant," he said.

But she could not answer. She watched him as he continued to bend over
the children, and when the smaller ones wept because they had to wait, he
whispered in their ears, astonishing one or two into laughter. Some
ceased crying and clung to him with dumb faith. And after the chosen
hundred had been admitted he turned to her again.

"You allow visitors?"

"Oh dear, yes. They'd come anyway. There's one up there now, a very swell
lady from New York--so swell I don't know what to say to her. Talk to her
for me."

"But I shouldn't know what to say, either," replied Janet. She smiled,
but she had an odd desire to cry. "What is she doing here?"

"Oh, thrashing 'round, trying to connect with life--she's one of the
unfortunate unemployed."

"Unemployed?"

"The idle rich," he explained. "Perhaps you can give her a job--enlist
her in the I.W.W."

"We don't want that kind," Janet declared.

"Have pity on her," he begged. "Nobody wants them--that's why they're so
pathetic."

She accompanied him up the narrow stairway to a great loft, the bareness
of which had been tempered by draped American flags. From the trusses of
the roof hung improvised electric lights, and the children were already
seated at the four long tables, where half a dozen ladies were supplyi