thoroughly. With her sister she was much alone, a lone figure in
a tossing, thoughtless sea.



Chapter II

WHAT POVERTY THREATENED--OF GRANITE AND BRASS


Minnie's flat, as the one-floor resident apartments were then
being called, was in a part of West Van Buren Street inhabited by
families of labourers and clerks, men who had come, and were
still coming, with the rush of population pouring in at the rate
of 50,000 a year. It was on the third floor, the front windows
looking down into the street, where, at night, the lights of
grocery stores were shining and children were playing. To Carrie,
the sound of the little bells upon the horse-cars, as they
tinkled in and out of hearing, was as pleasing as it was novel.
She gazed into the lighted street when Minnie brought her into
the front room, and wondered at the sounds, the movement, the
murmur of the vast city which stretched for miles and miles in
every direction.

Mrs. Hanson, after the first greetings were over, gave Carrie the
baby and proceeded to get supper. Her husband asked a few
questions and sat down to read the evening paper. He was a
silent man, American born, of a Swede father, and now employed as
a cleaner of refrigerator cars at the stock-yards. To him the
presence or absence of his wife's sister was a matter of