Jimmy Knight's married sister lived in a three-room suite, in an apartment block not far from the Commercial Hotel—that structure from whose windows Daisy had had her first view of the city's rooftops. As she followed her companion up the three flights of stairs, her mind reverted to that girl-wife she had seen from the hotel-window, hanging out a washing for three, and pinning the tinier garments in the centre of the clothesline.
"Come right in, people," invited Mrs. Tom Farrell, opening the door of Suite 30, as Jimmy, smiling humorously aside at Daisy, knocked like a bailiff; "You're as big an ike as ever, Jim. If you've waked young Tommy up, you'll go in and put him to sleep again. Mind that!"
Mrs. Tom was a pleasant-looking girl, a year or so older than Daisy, with a pretty mouth and a few freckle-dots on forehead and nose. Her hair was as red as Jimmy's was brown. She led the way along a short vestibule to the living-room.
"Tom's in the bathroom, having a shave," she said, with a kind of under-glance at Daisy; "I couldn't budge him out of his chair till I told him Jim was bringing a girl around, and then you couldn't see him for dust. All husbands is tarred with the same brush. Don't you ever get married, Miss——"
"Miss nothin'," said Jimmy, as they entered the neat room, with its "surface oak" centre-table, and buffet adorned with a cut-glass vase (a wedding present) filled with flowers contributed by the park gardener, who had a suite in the basement; "friend of the family, didn't I tell you, Bet. Name's Daisy, and she is one."
Jimmy was more at ease, in this familiar precinct. As his sister took Daisy's hat and went to put it in the bedroom, the two callers heard her remark, vigorously, to some object in an invisible corner, "Go off to sleep this minute, you! The idea!"
But the object only responded, wakefully, "Unk Dimmy! I wanna dinka wa'r."
"You want a spankin'," said his mother, reprehensively, "and you're going to get it. Don't bring him any water, Jim—he'll have the city waterworks dry, if he keeps on. It's the only excuse he can think of, for keepin' awake."
Jimmy, however, was at the faucet, with a glass of water half drawn. Carrying this, he dove into the bedroom as his sister came out.