She assented rather shamefacedly, and Miss Davies gave up. There was no rule against cakewalks, and she herself had invited Le Duc to entertain the boys and girls; so she concealed her dislike for this juvenile way of overstepping boundaries and went to the piano. Halloran was downright sorry for her, but he did not see what he could do..
CHAPTER III—George and His Troubles
Halloran foresaw that it might be late Saturday evening before Miss Davies and he could return to Evanston, so he arranged with another member of the crew to stand his watch from ten to midnight; and then, knowing nothing of what might be before them, these two young people set out on their search for George.
Picture a tenement far out on the North Side, one of thousands of smoke-coloured buildings, somewhere on an obscure street that was discouragingly like dozens of other streets. Without the tenement an electric light (for it was six o'clock and dark on this autumn day) threw its flare on an uneven cedar-block pavement, worn into ruts and holes that had given up, hopeless of repair, to mud and filth; on obscure little tailor shops and masquerade-costume shops, and dirty tobacco shops with windows hung full of questionable prints; on an itinerant popcorn-and-peanut man, who had stationed his glass-enclosed cart on the corner and was himself sitting on the curbstone, the picture of disgust with life; on a prosperous red-brick corner building, that shed light and comfort from half a dozen broad windows, announcing itself by its curtained inner door and its black-and-gilt signs to be Hoffman's sample room. So much for the neighbourhood. Within the tenement, up three flights of stairs, was an apartment of two rooms where lived Mrs. Craig with her daughter and her son, who bore the name of Bigelow.
Lizzie was sewing: her mother, back home for supper in the intermission between the work of afternoon and evening, was taking off her hat.
“Is the fire going, Lizzie?”
The girl shook her head without looking up. “How did I know you were coming home so early?”
“It is six o'clock.”