honest grip; though out where I come from we might call him a dude. All
New Yorkers seem to dress pretty well.

Presently Managing Clerk Crosby came, and Mr. Magoun, as lean, brusque and
mosquito-like as his partner is elephantine; and after a few words with
them I was called into the Judge's private room, where a great lump rose
in my throat when I tried, and miserably failed, to thank him for all his
great kindness.

"Consider, if it pleases you," he said, to put me quite at my ease, "that
I have proposed our arrangement, not so much on your own account as
because I loved your father and must rely upon his son. It brings back my
youth to speak his name--your name, Johnny Burke!"

Yes, I remember the words, I remember the tremour in the kind voice and
the mist of unshed tears through which he looked at me. I'm not dreaming;
sometimes I wish I were, almost.

When I left the Judge, of course I pasted right up to Union Square, though
I felt sure that Helen would be at college. No. 2 proved to be a dingy
brick building with wigs and armour and old uniforms and grimy pictures in
the windows, and above them the signs of a "dental parlour" and a school
for theatrical dancing.

It seemed an odd place in which to look for Nelly, but I pounded up the
worn stairs--dressmakers' advertisements on every riser--until I reached
the top floor, where a meal-bag of a woman whose head was tied up in a
coloured handkerchief confronted me with dustpan and broom.

"I'm the new leddy scrubwoman, and not afther knowin' th' names av th'