“Dear me! I was hoping you would show us all the sky-scrapers I’ve read about,” said Polly, eagerly.
“I planned to let the sight-seeing wait for a few days, as we must secure a place to live in, first of all. Here it is the middle of September, and I have to start school work the first of October, you know. In a great city like New York, the desirable apartments are generally taken as early as July and August. So we are up against it, in beginning to seek so late in the season.”
“But we can’t hunt at night, Anne, and you might take us out to show us the Great White Way—as the boys call it,” urged Eleanor.
Mrs. Evans came down in time to have luncheon with the Westerners, and in the hour she visited with them, it was learned that Mrs. Latimer and she had scoured the uptown west-side for suitable apartments for Mrs. Stewart, but everything had been leased long before. She concluded with:
“So I really do not see what you are going to do, unless you just happen to stumble over a place which has recently been resigned. There is absolutely no use in doing any place above Ninety-sixth street, as we sought diligently from that street up as far as One Hundred and Sixty-eighth street, and not a decent thing to be seen or had!”
“But Ninety-sixth street is awfully far uptown, isn’t it?” asked Anne, to whom the city was as yet a small middle-west town.
“Oh, dear, no! It is about the center of the city, between North and South, these days.”
“I’m sure we will find just what we want, dear Mrs. Evans, but we are grateful to you for being so kind to us,” said Polly.
“My dear child, I feel that I have done nothing in comparison to all you have done for me and mine. To know that my dear brother had friends during the last days of his life, means so much to me. I always had a horrible feeling that he died in the Klondike without money or friends;” and Mrs. Evans hurriedly dried the tears welling up in her eyes.
Of course, that launched the conversation about Old Man Montresor, and so interested were all concerned, that Mrs. Evans started when she heard the mantel clock chime the hour.