her wardrobe would furnish, Mrs. Roberts went to the alley the next
morning accompanied by her husband.

In one sense it was a mistake that the first call in the alley should
have been made on the Calkins family. It was calculated to give Mrs.
Roberts mistaken ideas as to the manner in which poor people lived. A
bare enough room, certainly, not even a bit of carpet laid before the
bed, but it was a clean room. Floor and window and cupboard-door were as
clean as water could make them; and the bed, while it looked hopelessly
hard and dreadful to Mrs. Roberts, was really a pattern of neatness and
purity to every dweller in that attic. There was a straw tick, covered
with a dark calico spread, which did duty as a sheet, and the boy who
lay on it was covered by a patched quilt that had been mended, and was
clean. Wonderful things these to say of such a locality! Mr. Roberts
suspected it, and Dr. Everett knew it. That gentleman was bending over
his patient when the two guests arrived, and vouchsafed them not even a
glance, while the dark-haired, dark-eyed, homely, decently-dressed girl
gave Mrs. Roberts a seat on the one chair which the room contained, and
set a stool for her husband that had been made of four old chair legs
and a square board.

Sallie Calkins was somewhat flurried by this unexpected call. She had no
idea who the people were, nor for what they had come. A vague fear that
they might be in some way connected with her brother's "place" at the
printing-office, which he was in such fear of losing that his night had
been a restless one, made her hasten to say, in a tremulous voice:--

"The doctor thinks he will be well in a little while. It isn't a bad
break, he says, and Mark wants to keep his place. He thinks, maybe, some
of the alley boys would keep it for him, if you would be so kind."