one flight; and half a dozen families and a dozen single
tenants higher--so you see the Louders had plenty of neighbors.
In fact, the multitude of the neighbors is one cause of my story.

Tilly Louder came home from the Lossing factory (where she is
a typewriter) one February afternoon. As she turned the corner,
she was face to the river, which is not so full of shipping
in winter that one cannot see the steel-blue glint of the water.
Back of her the brick paved street climbed the hill, under a
shapeless arch of trees. The remorseless pencil of a railway
has drawn black lines at the foot of the hill; and, all day and
all night, slender red bars rise and sink in their black sockets,
to the accompaniment of the outcry of tortured steam.
All day, if not all night, the crooked pole slips up and down
the trolley wire, as the yellow cars rattle, and flash,
and clang a spiteful little bell, that sounds like a soprano bark,
over the crossings.

It is customary in the Lossing Building to say, "We are
so handy to the cars." The street is a handsome street,
not free from dingy old brick boxes of stores below
the railway, but fast replacing them with fairer structures.
The Lossing Building has the wide arches, the recessed doors,
the balconies and the colonnades of modern business architecture.
The occupants are very proud of the balconies, in particular;
and, summer days, these will be a mass of greenery and bright tints.
To-day, it was so warm, February day though it was, that some
of the potted plants were sunning themselves outside the windows.

Tilly could see them if she craned her neck. There were some bouvardias