"Well, I hope an' pray you didn't throw away my insurance book. I was aimin' to clean up, myself, to-morrow. What on earth's the matter with Rosy Velt?"
Rosy, who had been banished to the kitchen for misbehavior, had been conducting a series of delicate experiments, with disastrous results. She had been warned since infancy never to put a button up her nose, but Providence having suddenly placed one in her way, and at the same time engaged her mother's attention elsewhere, the opportunity was too propitious to be lost.
Nance took advantage of her stepmother's sudden departure to cheer up Mr. Snawdor.
"We're gittin' things cleaned up," she said, "I can't work no more to-day though, 'cause I got to report to the lady."
"Ain't you goin' to slick yerself up a bit?" asked Uncle Jed, making a futile effort to smooth her hair.
"I have," said Nance, indignantly, "Can't you see I got on a clean apron?"
Uncle Jed's glance was not satisfied as it traveled from the dirty dress below the apron to the torn stockings and shabby shoes.
"Why don't you wear the gold locket?" suggested Mrs. Snawdor, who now returned with Rosy in one hand and the button in the other.
The gold locket was the one piece of jewelry in the family and when it was suspended on a black ribbon around Nance's neck, it filled her with a sense of elegance. So pleased was she with its effect that as she went out that afternoon, she peeped in on the new tenant in the hope that he would notice it. She found him leaning over a violin case, and her interest was fired at once.
"Can you play on the fiddle?" she demanded.
The small, elderly man in the neat, black suit lifted his head and smiled at her over his glasses.
"Yes, my little friend," he said in a low, refined voice, "I will play for you to dance sometime. You would like that? Yes?"
"Say, are you a Polock or a Dago?" she asked.
"I am neither. My name is Mr. Demorest. And you are my little neighbor, perhaps?"
"Third floor on the right," said Nance, adding in a business-like tone, "I'll be down to dance to-night."
She would have liked very much to stay longer, for the old gentleman was quite unlike any one she had ever talked to before, but the card in her hand named the hour of two, and back of the card was Mrs. Purdy, and back of Mrs. Purdy the juvenile court, the one thing in life so far whose authority Nance had seen fit to acknowledge.