forced its claims upon her until those claims were not easy to
ignore. Even though the circumstances in which her father had left
her were barely more than sufficient for a modest little flat uptown,
there was still always a little surplus, and that surplus counted
in certain quarters for very much indeed. But it wasn't only that.
The small amount of money that she was able to spend in that way
had little to do with it. The bonds which linked her to the sordid
surroundings that she had come to know so well were stronger far
than that. There wasn't any money involved in this visit, for
instance, that she was going now to make to Gypsy Nan. Gypsy Nan
was...

Rhoda Gray had halted before the doorway of a small, hovel-like,
two-story building that was jammed in between two tenements, which,
relatively, in their own class, were even more disreputable than
was the little frame house itself. A secondhand-clothes store
occupied a portion of the ground floor, and housed the proprietor
and his family as well, permitting the rooms on the second floor
to be "rented out"; the garret above was the abode of Gypsy Nan.

There was a separate entrance, apart from that into the
secondhand-clothes store, and she pushed this door open and stepped
forward into an absolutely black and musty-smelling hallway. By
feeling with her hands along the wall she reached the stairs and
began to make her way upward. She had found Gypsy Nan last night
huddled in the lower doorway, and apparently in a condition that
was very much the worse for wear. She had stopped and helped the
woman upstairs to her garret, whereupon Gypsy Nan, in language far
more fervent than elegant, had ordered her to begone, and had
slammed the door in her face.