"Kind of a nice fellow," Tillie said, cup to lips--"the new man."

"Week or meal?"

"Week. He'd be handsome if he wasn't so grouchy-looking. Lit up some when
Mr. Wagner sent him one of his love letters. Rooms over at the Pages'."

Mrs. McKee drew a long breath and entered the lam stew in a book.

"When I think of Anna Page taking a roomer, it just about knocks me over,
Tillie. And where they'll put him, in that little house--he looked thin,
what I saw of him. Seven pounds and a quarter." This last referred, not
to K. Le Moyne, of course, but to the lamb stew.

"Thin as a fiddle-string."

"Just keep an eye on him, that he gets enough." Then, rather ashamed of
her unbusinesslike methods: "A thin mealer's a poor advertisement. Do you
suppose this is the dog meat or the soup scraps?"

Tillie was a niece of Mrs. Rosenfeld. In such manner was most of the
Street and its environs connected; in such wise did its small gossip start
at one end and pursue its course down one side and up the other.

"Sidney Page is engaged to Joe Drummond," announced Tillie. "He sent her a
lot of pink roses yesterday."

There was no malice in her flat statement, no envy. Sidney and she, living
in the world of the Street, occupied different spheres. But the very