A Hazard of New Fortunes, Part First

rnished houses, without steam or elevator, March followed his wife about with patient wonder. She rather liked the worst of them

, and they enjoyed a moment in which the anomaly of their presence there on that errand, so

ed and nobody been any the wiser!" she said

don't want you to lose your head, Basil. And I don't want you to sentimentalize any of the things you see in New York. I think you were disposed to do it in that street we drove through. I don't believe ther

hen people get used to a bad state of things they had better stick to it; in fact, t

me to their hotel. "Now to-night we will go to the theatre," she said, "and get this whole house business out of our minds, and be perfectly fresh for a new start in the morning." Suddenly she clutched

. W

and cram it into his mouth and eat it down as if he were famished

n was doing-like a hungry dog. They kept up with him, in the fascination of the sight

n March said, "I must go after

nt-hungry?" he

could not speak

his questi

itiful, desperate sh

up; he caught the hand of this alms-giver in both of his and clung to i

is by such a chance, and got back to his wife, and the man lap

might live here for years and not see another case like that; and, of course, there ar

nswered. "That's what I can't bear, and I shall not come to a place where such

ill you live in? Such things are pos

t change the

the theatre and forg

ickets as we pass th

il. I am going home to Boston to-ni

ctive of what had happened, that she had been away from the children long enough; that she ought to be at home to finish up the work

put in. "We're

e turning up all the time on our travels in the old days. Why, when we were in New York here on our wedd

at wasn't the period of life for us to notice it. Don't you remember, when we started to Niagara the last time, how everybody

weren't starvin

if you're getting on pretty well in the forties. If it's the unhappy who see unhappiness, think what misery must be revealed to peo

o the personal base again, as women must to get any good out of t

more se

you wouldn't be so serious, i

," said March. "Shall we go to

oing to

you like that for triviality? It's

y silly,"

ote that she had heard they were pleased with her apartment, and that she thought she could make the terms to suit. She had

Mrs. March. "Which of the ten

e answered. "In the

yes-I must. I couldn't go away without seeing what sort of creatu

e," March

light as that co

toy b

March admitted. "But I feel that naught but

Green, so that Mrs. March distinctly paused with her card in her hand before venturing even tentatively to address her. Then she was astonished at the low, calm voice in which Mrs. Green acknowledged herself, and slowly proceeded to apologize for calling. It was not quite true that she had taken her passage for Europe, but she hoped soon to do so, and she confessed that in the mean time she was anxious to let her flat. S

at she had been through all that, and that if she could have shown her apartment to them she felt sure that she could have explained it so that they would have seen its capabilities better, Mrs. March assented to this, and Mrs. Green added that if they found nothing exactly suitable she would be glad to have them look at it again; and then Mrs. March said that she was going back to Boston herself, but she was leaving Mr. March to continue the search; and she had no doubt he would be only too glad to see the apartment by daylight. "But if you take it, Basil," she warned him, when they were alone, "I shall simply renounce you. I wouldn't live in that junk-shop if you gave it to me. But who would have thought she was

stakes herself to that extent. What is Mr. Grosvenor Green goi

Basil; that's all I've got to say to you.

bout her but her apa

there was an elevator and steam heat. And the location is very convenient. And there was a hall-boy to bring up cards. The halls and stairs were

I couldn't stand a

aps only bring Margaret, and put out the whole of the wash

'm not thinking

h's train, to find out what had become of them, he said,

to Boston, and leaving Mr. March here to do anyt

and it's the same as if I'd no choice. I'm staying behi

sed you would be all settled by this time, or I should have humped myself t

s, one of them does amount to something. It comes so near being what we

osvenor Green and her flat

and I won't leave him till he's found just the right thing. It exists, of course; it must in a city of eighteen hundr

ion when he found they were not driving, but she

sweet to see how really fond of you he is. But I didn't want him stringing a

; a man with his head fallen on his hands upon a table; a girl and her lover leaning over the window-sill together. What suggestion! what drama? what infinite interest! At the Forty-second Street station they stopped a minute on the bridge that crosses the track to the branch road for the Central Depot, and looked up and down the long stretch of the Elevated to north and south. The track that found and lost itself a thousand times in the flare and tremor of the innumerable lights; the moony sheen of the electrics mixing with the reddish points and blots of gas far and near; the architectural shapes of houses and churches and towers, rescued by the obscurity from all that was ignoble in them, and the coming and going of the trains marking the stations with vivider or fainter plumes of flame-shot steam-formed an incomparable perspective. They often talked afterward of t

st of the fact that her berth was in the very middle of the car; and she promised to write as soon as she reached home. She promised also that, having seen the limitations of New York in respect to flats, she would not be hard on him if he took something not quite ideal. Only he must rememb