bedroom, sitter and bath on the top floor. The house is a rabbit
warren of bedrooms, sitters and baths, and in every one of them
there's some poor devil trying to squeeze a little kindness out of
fate. That wretched taxi driver! He may have a wife waiting for him.
Do you think that red-haired feller's got to the hospital yet? He
had a nice cut on his own silly face--and serve him right! I hope
it'll teach him that he hasn't bought the blooming world--but of
course it won't. He's the sort that never gets taught anything,
worse luck! Nobody spanked him when he was young and soft. Come on
up, and you shall taste my scrambled eggs. I'll show you what a
forgiving little soul I am."

She laughed, ran her eyes quickly over Martin, and opened the door
with a latchkey. Half a dozen small letter boxes were fastened to
the wall, with cards in their slots.

"Who the devil cares?" said Martin to himself, and he followed the
girl up the narrow, ill-lighted staircase covered with shabby
carpet. Two or three inches of white stockings gleamed above the
drab uppers of her high-heeled boots. Outside the open door of a
room on the first floor there was a line of milk bottles, and Martin
sighted a man in shirt sleeves, cooking sausages on a small gas jet
in a cubby-hole. He looked up, and a cheery smile broke out on his
clean-shaven face. There was brown grease paint on his collar.
"Hello, Tootles," he called out.

"Hello, Laddy," she said. "How'd it go to-night?"

"Fine. Best second night in the history of the theater. Come in and
have a bite."