'
"And then Mrs. Next Door stands there a minute on the
clothes-reel platform, with the wind whipping her skirts about her,
and the fresh smell of the growing things coming to her. And
suddenly she says: `I guess I'll wash mine too, while the baby's
asleep.'"
The collarless young man rose from his chimney, picked up his
handkerchief, and moved to the chimney just next to Mary Louise's
soap box.
"Live here?" he asked, in his impolite way.
"If I did not, do you think that I would choose this as the
one spot in all New York in which to dry my hair?"
"When I said, `Live here,' I didn't mean just that. I meant
who are you, and why are you here, and where do you come from, and
do you sign your real name to your stuff, or use a nom de plume?"
"Why--how did you know?" gasped Mary Louise.
"Give me five minutes more," grinned the keen-eyed young man,
"and I'll tell you what make your typewriter is, and where the last
rejection slip came from."
"Oh!" said Mary Louise again. "Then you are the scrub-lady's
stalwart son, and you've been ransacking my waste-basket."
Quite unheeding, the collarless man went on, "And so you
thought you could write, and you came on to New York (you know one
doesn't just travel to New York, or ride to it, or come to it; one
`comes on' to New York), and now you're not so sure about the
writing, h'm? And back home what did you do?"
"Back home I taught school--and hated it.
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