"Thank you," she said, and passed on. At the head of the flight of stairs she turned her head. Jan was still there.
"Is your room all right?" She asked the question hurriedly, awkwardly.
"All right, ma'am."
"And not too noisy for you here?—the basement noise, I mean."
"A ship-carpenter, ma'am—he soon gets used to noise."
"Of course." She glanced furtively at him. "Good-night." She hurried downstairs.
That night when Jan, who read romantic fiction to relieve his loneliness, laid down his stirring mediæval tale to go to bed, he did not follow up the intention with immediate action, as usual.
By and by he raised the window-sash, and the [pg 225] cool, damp sea-air feeling good, he leaned out to enjoy it. It was a cloudy night, with a touch of coming snow in the air; but for all that a night to enjoy, only for the racket ascending from the pool-room.
"I don't think much of those people down there," thought Jan as he lowered the sash to all but six or eight inches for fresh air and picked up the alarm clock from the rickety dresser. "I wonder if she's one of that crowd?" And he began to wind the clock. "But sure she ain't—sure not."
Jan had been holding the clock absently in his hand. Suddenly he set it down and scolded himself—"Jan Tingloff, remember you has to be up at six in the morning!"—and undressed, blew out the light and slid into bed, and tried to go to sleep. And he did after a while; but his last thought before he fell into slumber was: "Who'd ever think one day a woman could grow so young-looking the next day?"