man vot is broke. I vill
put back de bottles. You take it home agin."

"I would if I had any home to take it to. I am a stranger here and am
two weeks behind in the rent of my room."

"Is dot so? Vell, dot is too bad. Two weeks behint and no home but a
room! I vouldn't think dot to look at you."

"I would not either if I had the courage to look at myself in the glass.
Then you cannot help me?"

"I don't say dot I can't. Somebody may come in. I have lots of tings
belong to peoples, and ven other peoples come in, sometimes dey buy,
and sometimes dey don't. Sometimes only one day goes by, and sometimes a
whole year. You leave it vid me. I take care of it. Den I get my little
Masie--dat little girl of mine vot I call Beesvings--to polish up all de
bottles and make everyting look like new."

"Then I will come in the morning?"

"Yes, but give me your name--someting might happen yet, and your
address. Here, write it on dis card."

"No, that is unnecessary. I will take your word for it."

"But vere can I find you?"

"I will find myself, thank you," and he strode out into the rain.

Chapter II

In the days when Otto Kling's shop-windows attracted collectors in
search of curios and battered furniture, "The Avenue," as its denizens
always called Fourth Avenue between Madison Square Garden and the
tunnel, was a little city in itself.

Almost all the needs of a greater one could be supplied by the stores
fronting its sidewalks. If tea, coffee, sugar, and similar stimulating
and soothing groceries were wanted, old Bundleton, on the corner above
Kling's, in a white apron and paper cuffs, weighed them out. If it were
butter or eggs, milk, cream, or curds, the Long Island Dairy--which was
really old man Heffern, his daughter Mary, and his boy Tom--had them
in a paper bag, or on your plate, or into your pitcher before you could
count your change. If it were a sirloin, or lamb-chops, or Philadelphia
chickens, or a Cincinnati ham, fat Porterfield, watched over from her
desk by fat Mrs. Porterfield, dumped them on a pair of glittering brass
scales and sent them home to your kitchen invitingly laid out in a flat
wicker basket. If it were fish--fresh, salt, smoked, or otherwise--to
say nothing of crabs, oysters, clams, and the exclusive and expensive
lobster--it was Codman, a few doors above Porterfield's, who had them on
ice, or in barrels, the varnished claws of the lobsters thrust out like
the hands of a drowning m