“Uhm.”  The man allowed his singular eyes to move over her.  “I think we can arrange something.  I’ve seen you pass my place, looking in; and I had something in mind when I started up here—­something aside from junk.  I could make a place over there—­matron or cashier.  How would you like that—­cashier at the Garden?” He rocked up on his toes and clicked his heels quite audibly.

“I don’t know anything about it.”

“You’ll soon learn,” he was confident.  He mentioned the salary, and that a former cashier was now half owner of an uptown place.  And for half an hour Great Taylor’s saturnine mind followed in the wake of his smoothly flowing words.

Why couldn’t Grit have talked like that? she kept asking herself.  Grit never said anything.  Why couldn’t he been clean like that, with hair brushed into a curl that sat up like that? ...  The man’s words gradually slipped far beyond her, and only his pleasant voice accompanied her own thoughts.  No reason why she shouldn’t be cashier at the Garden.  Only one reason, anyway, and that wasn’t any reason at all....

On an afternoon more than a year ago she had gone to the place around the corner.  She had told Grit all about it, and Grit had said in his weary voice, “Don’t never go again, Nell.”  She had argued with Grit.  The Garden wasn’t wicked; nothing the matter with it; other people went there of an afternoon; she liked the music....  And Grit had listened, drooping in his chair, wrists crossed and palms turned upward.  Finally, when Nell had finished, he had repeated, “Don’t go again.”  He had not argued, for Grit never argued; he was always too weary.  But this had been one of his longest speeches.  He had ended:  “The Devil himself owns that place.  I ought to know, my junkyard’s right back of it.”  And he had closed his eyes and taken a long, deep breath.  “When I say a thing, Nell, I’m a stone wall.  You can’t go there again—­now or never.”  And that had settled it, for Great Taylor had been afraid of Grit.  But now Grit was dead; gone for good.  She would do as she pleased....

When she looked up the man had stopped talking.  He glanced at the clock.

“What time?” murmured Great Taylor.

“Five,” said the man from just around the corner.

Nell nodded her head and watched as the man’s fastidiously pressed trousers and polished shoes cleared the closing door.  Nell immediately went to the looking-glass—­a cracked little mirror that hung by the mantelpiece—­and studied the reflection of herself with newly awakened interest.  She had never seemed so radiant—­her smooth hair, her lineless face, her large gray eyes and perfect throat.  “I ain’t so bad looking,” she admitted.  Grit had never made her feel this way.  And again she asked herself why he could not have been clean like the man from around the corner.

She rehearsed all that had been said.  She thought of the salary the man had mentioned, and made calculations.  It was more than Grit had averaged for the two of them to live on.  With prodigal fancy she spent the money and with new-born thrift she placed it in bank.  Limited only by her small knowledge of such things, she revelled in a dream of affluence and luxury which was only dissipated when gradually she became conscious that throughout the past hour she had been clinging to a grimy, coverless book.