She got out slowly, tucking Babiche mechanically under her arm. The
man lifted out her bag and touched his cap,--she did not even see him
go.

The huge willows still arched above Montrose Place, but they were shabby
and dying. And the mossy bricked sidewalk was gone but on its
muddy concrete successor, scores and scores of noisy, dirty, alien
children squabbled and cried. Some of them were pushing against this
strange woman who had descended from the motor, some of them fingered
her coat, one bolder than the rest sat down upon her bag. It seemed to
her as though more children than she had known there were in the whole
world were crowding against her. Wherever she looked there were
children. They hung from the once lovely old windows, they slid down
the once beautiful balustrade, they tumbled out of every doorway. And
wherever there were not children there were signs. Blatant, dingy
signs. The first one she glimpsed was propped before the basement
gate through which the housemaids had been wont to enter. It was shaped
like a tombstone and with amateur lettering announced:

"TONY HE SELLA COAL WOOD ICE"

And from the rusty iron balcony hung a ragged pair of trousers into
which had been inserted a board, the legs flapped dispiritedly in the
gusty wind from the river. Painted in scraggling white paint across
the seat of the trousers was written

"A. Cohen. Pressing 25 and 50 cents."

It was twilight. The tailor had lighted a single flickering gas jet