He purchased a serviceable suit, stout shoes, a cap, and, after a short consideration, two flannel shirts. If this were not satisfactory, he concluded, he could pay with a portion of his salary. The slip of the total amount, which he carefully folded, registered thirty-one dollars and seventy cents.
At a small tobacco shop, where he drew upon his own rapidly diminishing capital, he discovered from the proprietor that it would be necessary to take a suburban car to the address furnished him. He rolled rapidly between rows of small, identical, orderly brick dwellings; on each shallow portico a door exhibited an obviously meretricious graining; dingy or garish curtains draped the single lower windows; the tin eaves were continuous, unvaried, monotonous. Occasionally a greengrocer's display broke the monotony of the vitreous way, a rare saloon or drugstore held the corners. Farther on the street suffered a decline, the line of dwellings was broken by patches of bedraggled gardens, set with the broken fragments of stone ornaments; small frame structures, streaked by the weather and blistered remnants of paint, alternated with stables, stores heaped with the sorry miscellanies of meager, disrupted households. Imperceptibly green spaces opened, foliage fluttered in the orange light of the declining sun; through an opening in the habited wall he caught sight of a glimmering stream, cows wandering against a hill.
He left the car finally at a lane where the houses, set back solidly in smooth, opulent lawns, were somberly comfortable, reserved. The place he sought, a four-square ugly dwelling faced with a tower, the woodwork painted mustard yellow, was surrounded by gigantic tulip poplars. At the front a cement basin caught the spray from a cornucopia held aloft by sportive cherubs balanced precariously on the tails of reversed dolphins, circled by a tan-bark path to the entrance and a broad side porch. He was about to ring the bell when a high, young voice summoned him to the latter. There he discovered a girl with a mass of coppery hair, loosely tied and streaming over her shoulder, in a coffee-colored wicker chair. She was dressed in white, without ornaments, and wore pale yellow silk stockings. A yellow paper book, with a title in French, was spread upon her lap; and, gravely sitting at her side, was a large terrier with a shaggy yellow coat.