It was past one o'clock when we got to the city, and we hadn't had anything to eat. We found a lunch place near the depot, and then I spent a penny for a paper, and we set there in the restaurant and tried to find where to go. It wasn't much of any fun, getting to the city, not the way you'd think it would be, because Mis' Bingy and I didn't know where we were going.

The Furnished Room page all sounded pleasant, but when we asked the restaurant keeper where the cheap ones were, most of them was quite far to walk. Finally we picked out some near each other and started out to find them. I carried my valise and Mis' Bingy's, and she had the baby. It was a hot day, with a feel of thunder in the air.

We walked for two hours, because neither of us thought we'd ought to begin by spending car-fare. Mis' Bingy had sixteen dollars that she'd saved, off and on, for two years. I had five dollars. So neither of us was worried very much about money; but we wanted to save all we could. We went to five or six places that were nice, but they cost too much; and to two that we could have taken, only the lady said she didn't want a baby in the house.

"If they're born in your house, do you turn 'em out?" I says to one of 'em.

Pretty soon we found a little grassy place with trees, and big buildings around it, and we went in that and sat down on the grass.

"Mis' Bingy," I says, "was you ever in the city before?"

"Sure I was," she says, proud, "twelve years ago. We come to his uncle's funeral. But he didn't leave him anything."

"I was here once," I says, "when I was 'leven. To have my eyes done to. And once when I was eighteen, when Mother got her teeth. Did you ever go to the theater here?" I ask' her.

"No," says she.

"Did you ever see in a jewelry store here?"

"No," says she.

"Or in stores with low-neck dresses and light colors?"

"No," says she.

"Nor the Zoo with the animals, nor a store where they sell just flowers, nor the band?" I says.

"No," says she. "But he used to tell me, when he come up sometimes," she tacks on.

The sun kept coming out and going under. The trees moved pleasant and folks went hurrying by. It kind of come over me:

"Mis' Bingy," I says, "you ain't ever had anything in your whole life, and neither have I. And now it's the city!"

But she put her head down on the baby and begun to cry.

"I don't know what's going to become of us," she says. "It's awful."

I jumped up and stood on the grass and looked off down the street toward the city.

"And I don't know what's going to become of us!" I says. "Ain't it grand?"

I laughed, and whirled on my toe. A woman was going along the walk that cut through the grassy place where we was. She looked nice, like pictures of women.

"Excuse me," I says to her, "can you tell us somebody that has a room to rent, a cheap room?"

"I'm sorry," she says, and bent her head and went on.

It give me a little cold feeling. It come to me that maybe everything wasn't the way it looked.

"Come on, Mis' Bingy," I says, "it's getting late. We don't want to sleep out here to-night."

The room that we finally found was at the back and up two stairways, and it cost fifty cents more than we thought we'd pay, but we took it.

And now the singing in me that I'd been keeping down while there was things to do, come up through, the little funny singing that was all over me. I took out the two cards—that I'd got only that morning, that seemed, lifetimes back—and laid one of 'em on the bureau. It was Mr. Ember's card. The other one I wouldn't look up till to-morrow when I started out to find my work. But this one was his card, that he'd told me would find him. He'd been on his way back to the city that morning. By now he would be here. And I wasn't going to wait.

I put on my other shoes and a clean waist, and I told Mis' Bingy that I'd be back in a little while. She was going to try to go to sleep. I heard her lock the door before I got to the stairs, and I knew that she'd be afraid all the time that Keddie was going to find her.

Out on the street I asked how to get to the address on the card. It was on the far edge of the town: the policeman begun to tell me which car to take.

"I'll walk," I says.

"It'll take you an hour," says he.

"It's my hour," says I, and I started. But it come to me that that wasn't the way Mr. Ember would have thought anybody ought to answer, and I felt kind of sick. I thought, How was I going to remember to do all the ways I knew he'd want?

It took me more than an hour to walk it. It was 'most six o'clock when I finally turned in the little street, just a block long, where he lived. My heart begun to beat, while I walked along slow, looking at the numbers. It come to me that maybe he wouldn't be glad to see me.

Sixteen ... eighteen ... twenty-two ... twenty-four, and that was his. It had a high brick fence—I could just see the roof over it—and a little picket gate standing open. I went along a short walk with green and yellow bushes on each side to a low porch with a door, that was standing open, too. And on the door was two cards: "Mr. Arthur Gordon" was on one. The other was his. Below them it said: "Visitors Enter."

So I went in, the way it said, through a low, bare, dim hall, and through a door on the right to a little room; and beyond was a big room, with a queer, sloping window all over the ceiling. The room had pictures on the walls. And it was full of folks.

I stood by the door looking for him. It didn't seem possible that we could meet here, now, when I'd left him such a little while ago, there in Twiney's pasture. There was a good many different kinds of men, most of them smiling. They were looking at the pictures, or drinking from cups round a white table. I looked at them first, one after another; but none of them was him.

Then I begun noticing the women. They looked like the kind I'd seen in the Weekly, Saturdays, when there was pictures. They were all light-colored, with dresses that you couldn't tell how they were made, and hair that you couldn't remember how it was done up, and soft voices that went up and down, different from any I'd ever heard. I could hear what some of them near me were saying, but there was none of it that I could understand, nor what it was about, nor what the names meant. And all of a sudden I see through it: These folks must all have done the things he had done—Asia, Europe, volcanoes—and they could talk about it his way. These were the kind of people he was used to.

Right near me was a woman in a dress that looked like I've seen the clouds look like, all showing through pink, with a hat like I'd never seen except once in a window when I was waiting for Mother and her teeth. I remember just what the woman said—I stood saying it over, like when I was learning a piece for elocution class, home. She says:

"I beg your pardon? But I fancy Mr. Ember would call that effect far from artificial...."

They walked by me. I stood there, saying over and over what she had just said about Mr. Ember. I didn't know what it meant, but it made me remember something. It made me remember the way I'd talked to him that morning, and the song I'd sung him, running backward on the road and trying to flirt with him; and that about his not giving me his right name.

"Pardon me," somebody near me said, "I wonder if I may serve you in any way?"

I didn't half see the man who spoke to me. I just shook my head, and slipped out the door and out of the little yard.