oily bit of paper, checked their number by the number of bundles, gave
Julia the buttery change, and Julia hurried home for a delicious
loitering breakfast with her mother. Emeline, still in her limp,
lace-trimmed nightgown, with a spotted kimono hanging loosely over it,
and her hair a wildly tousled mass at the top of her head, presided at a
clear end of the kitchen table. She and Julia occupied only two rooms of
the original apartment now; a young lawyer, with his wife and child, had
the big front room, and the dining-room was occupied by two mysterious
young men who came and went for years without ever betraying anything of
their own lives to their neighbours. Julia only knew that they were
young, quiet, hard working, and of irreproachable habits.

But she knew the people in the front room quite well. Mrs. Raymond
Toomey was a neat, bright, hopeful little woman, passionately devoted to
her husband and her spoiled, high-voiced little son. Raymond Toomey was
a big, blustering fool of a man, handsome in a coarse sort of way,
noisy, shallow, and opinionated. Whenever there were races, the Toomeys
went to the races, taking the precocious "Lloydy," in his velvet
Fauntleroy suit and tasselled shoes, and taking "Baby," a shivering
little terrier with wet, terrified eyes. Sometimes Mrs. Toomey came out
to the kitchen in the morning, to curl her ostrich feathers over the gas
stove, or join Mrs. Page in a cup of coffee.

"God, girlie, that goes to the spot," she would yawn, stirring her cup,
both elbows on the table. "We had a fierce day yesterday, and Ray took a
little too much last night--you know how men are! He had a stable tip
yesterday, and went the limit--like a fool! I play hunches--there's no
such thing as a tip!"

And sometimes she would put a little printed list of entries before