Then Roma hastened to dress herself for her journey, and when she had done so she collected all her remaining effects, put them in a second bag, and then took a long, last look around the rooms she had occupied for four months, and might never see again. She opened the west window and looked out upon the bit of woods which the march of improvement had still spared behind this newly opened street in the northwestern suburb of “the city of magnificent distances.”
She hoped that it would yet be spared, and inclosed in a park, rather than be swept away.
Then she invoked a blessing on the house and on all who might come into it.
Roma, in some moods of her mind, was devout almost to the verge of fanaticism, and had been more than once accused of superstition.
“Come, darling, we will go down now,” she said, and took her little Owlet by the hand and led her out, the child carrying the dog basket in which the pup was to travel.
On the elevator she remembered the lad who ran the machine, and gave him a gift.
“You asked everybody else to come to see us in the country, why don’t you ask poor Titus? He is an orphan boy, too,” said Owlet.
“So I will,” said Roma. Then, turning to the lad, who could not have been more than ten years old, though he did run the elevator, she said:
“Titus, what is your full name, dear?”
“Titus Blair, ma’am.”