Little Ann took off her chorister's-gown apron and her kerchief, and patted and touched up her hair. She was pink to her ears, and had several new dimples; and when she sat down opposite him, as she had sat that first night at Mrs. Bowse's boarding-house supper, Tembarom stared at her and caught his breath.
“You ARE there?” he said, “ain't you?”
“Yes, I am,” she answered.
When they had cleared the table and washed the dishes, and had left the toy kitchen spick and span, the ten million lights in New York were lighted and casting their glow above the city. Tembarom sat down on the Adams chair before the window and took Little Ann on his knee. She was of the build which settles comfortably and with ease into soft curves whose nearness is a caress. Looked down at from the fourteenth story of the St. Francesca apartments, the lights strung themselves along lines of streets, crossing and recrossing one another; they glowed and blazed against masses of buildings, and they hung at enormous heights in mid-air here and there, apparently without any support. Everywhere was the glow and dazzle of their brilliancy of light, with the distant bee hum of a nearing elevated train, at intervals gradually deepening into a roar. The river looked miles below them, and craft with sparks or blaze of light went slowly or swiftly to and fro.
“It's like a dream,” said Little Ann, after a long silence. “And we are up here like birds in a nest.”
He gave her a closer grip.
“Miss Alicia once said that when I was almost down and out,” he said. “It gave me a jolt. She said a place like this would be like a nest. Wherever we go,—and we'll have to go to lots of places and live in lots of different ways,—we'll keep this place, and some time we'll bring her here and let her try it. I've just got to show her New York.”
“Yes, let us keep it,” said Little Ann, drowsily, “just for a nest.”
There was another silence, and the lights on the river far below still twinkled or blazed as they drifted to and fro.
“You are there, ain't you?” said Tembarom in a half-whisper.