to Mrs. Peck, "but I'd have boarded her free if her father would have
let her stay. But he wouldn't, and, anyway, she'd no more let him go
off alone than she'd jump off Brooklyn Bridge."

It had been arranged that partly as a farewell banquet and partly to
celebrate Galton's decision about the page, there was to be an oyster
stew that night in Mr. Hutchinson's room, which was distinguished as a
bed-sitting-room. Tembarom had diplomatically suggested it to Mr.
Hutchinson. It was to be Tembarom's oyster supper, and somehow he
managed to convey that it was only a proper and modest tribute to Mr.
Hutchinson himself. First-class oyster stew and pale ale were not so
bad when properly suggested, therefore Mr. Hutchinson consented. Jim
Bowles and Julius Steinberger were to come in to share the feast, and
Mrs. Bowse had promised to prepare.

It was not an inspiring day for Little Ann. New York had seemed a
bewildering and far too noisy place for her when she had come to it
directly from her grandmother's cottage in the English village, where
she had spent her last three months before leaving England. The dark
rooms of the five-storied boarding-house had seemed gloomy enough to
her, and she had found it much more difficult to adjust herself to her
surroundings than she could have been induced to admit to her father.
At first his temper and the open contempt for American habits and
institutions which he called "speaking his mind" had given her a great
deal of careful steering through shoals to do. At the outset the
boarders had resented him, and sometimes had snapped back their own
views of England and courts. Violent and disparaging argument had
occasionally been imminent, and Mrs. Bowse had worn an ominous look.
Their rooms had in fact been "wanted" before their first week had come
to an end, and Little Ann herself scarcely knew how she had tided over