“Bully for you, Moses. And don’t forget to come up-stairs when I ring. Mr. Atwater in yet?”
“No, sir; not as I knows on. Ain’t seen nuffin’ of him. ’Spec’ he’s a little mite how-come-you. I seen in de papers dat bofe on yo’ was at de big ball last night. Matilda was a-readin’ it out while I was a-brushin’ yo’ shoes.”
The young architect waved his hand in reply and mounted the stairs, his strong, well-knit frame filling the space between the wall and the banisters. He had mounted these same stairs in the small hours of the morning, but if he was at all fatigued by his night’s outing, there was no evidence of it in his movements. He was forging his way up, his coat thrown back, arms swinging loose, head erect, with a lifting power and spring that would have done credit to a trained athlete.
Only once did he pause, and that was when the door of Miss Ann’s apartment on the second floor was opened softly and the old lady’s fluffy gray head was thrust out. He had never met the dear woman, but he lifted his hat in a respectful salute, and brought his body to a standstill until she had closed the door again.
She, no doubt, misunderstood the sound of his tread, a curious mistake had she thought a moment, for no one of the occupants of 99—and there were a good many of them—had ever mounted the dingy stairs two steps at a time, humming a song between jumps, except the handsome, devil-may-care young architect. The others climbed and caught their breath. And climbed again and caught another breath. So did most of the visitors. As for her own invalid sister, Miss Jane, who shared with her the rooms behind this partly opened and gently closed door, the poor lady had no breath of any kind to catch, and so wheezed up one step at a time, her thin, bird-claw fingers clutching the hand-rail. It was she Miss Ann was waiting for, it being after five o’clock, and the day being particularly raw and uncomfortable, even for one in January.
He had reached his own door now, the one on the third floor—there was only one flight above it—and with the aid of a second key attached to his bunch made his way into the apartment.
The sight of his cosey sitting-room loosened up the bar of another song: the janitor’s fire was still blazing, and one of the three big piano-lamps with umbrella-shades Moses had lighted and turned down was sending a warm glow throughout the interior.
Joe tossed his hat on a low table, stripped off his overcoat and coat, pushed his arms into a brown velvet jacket which he took from a hook in his bedroom, and settled himself at his desk, an old-fashioned colonial affair, which had once stood in his grandfather’s home in his native town. Heaped up on a wide pad, the comers bound with silver clamps, was a pile of letters of various colors, shapes, and sizes.
These the young fellow smoothed out with a sweep of his hand, glancing hurriedly at the several handwritings, pulled out a drawer of the desk, opened a box of cigars, and selecting one with the greatest care, snipped its end with a cutter hung to his watch-chain. In the same measured way he drew a match along the under-side of the colonial, held the flame to the perfecto, and, after a puff or two to assure himself that it was in working order, proceeded leisurely to open his mail.
It is good to be young and good-looking and a favorite wherever you go. It is better yet to be good-natured, and well-born, and able to earn your living, and it is better still to so love the work by which you earn your daily bread that you count as nothing the many setbacks and difficulties which its pursuit entails.