But although there was the usual crowd at the corner, and all seemed to be in a hurry to-night, Lyddy saw nothing of either her sister or the ladder-truck. She went back to the kitchen, satisfied that the fire apparatus had not swung into their street, so the tenement must be safe for the time being.
She finished laying the table for supper. Once she looked up. There was that man at the window again!
That is, he _would_ be a man some day, Lyddy told herself. But she believed, big as he was, he was just a hobbledehoy-boy. He was a boy who, if one looked at him, just _had_ to smile. And he was always working in a white apron and brown straw cuff-shields at that window which was a little above the level of Lyddy's kitchen window.
Lyddy Bray abominated flirting and such silly practises. And although the boy at the window was really good to look upon--cleanly shaven, rosy-cheeked, with good eyes set wide apart, and a firm, broad chin--Lyddy did not like to see him every time she raised her eyes from her own kitchen tasks.
Often, even on dark days, she drew the shade down so that she should have more privacy. For sometimes the young man looked idly out of the window and Lyddy believed that, had she given him any encouragement, he would have opened his own window and spoken to her.
The place in which he worked was a tall loft building; she believed he was employed in some sort of chemical laboratory. There were retorts, and strange glass and copper instruments in partial view upon his bench.
Now, having lighted the gas, Lyddy stepped to the window to pull down the shade closely and shut the young man out. He was staring with strange eagerness at her--or, at least, in her direction.
He flung up his window just as she reached for the shade. But she saw then that he was looking above her story.
"It's those Smith girls, I declare," thought Lyddy. "Aren't they bold creatures? And--really--I thought he was too nice a boy----"
That was the girl of it! She was shocked at the thought of having any clandestine acquaintance with the young man opposite; yet it cheapened him dreadfully in Lyddy's eyes to see him fall prey to the designing girls in the flat above. The Smith girls had flaunted their cheap finery in the faces of Lyddy and 'Phemie Bray ever since the latter had come here to live.