Had these been pay patients, carriage trade, Receipts would have soared dizzily in these days, and handsome additions might have been made to that Beirne residue of fifteen thousand dollars, now lying useless, not even at three per centum, in Mr. Heth’s Fourth National Bank.  But here trooped only the unworthy with unworthy troubles, not always of the body; the poor and the sinful with their acute complaints; waiters and day-laborers and furtive sisters in sorry finery, plumbers’ helpers with broken heads, bankrupt washerwomen, married grocer’s clerks with coughs not destined to stop.  To these through the sweltering days and nights, young Dr. Vivian ministered according to his gifts.  They took his pills, his bottles and his “treatment”; they lauded but rarely took his moral counsel; and not a few spoke of loans....

All July the old hotel rang with the blows of hammer and the rasp of saw, in preparation for its new birth in September, as the Union Settlement House.  There came often, in the late afternoons, the Rev. George Dayne, the tireless and kind-faced Secretary of Charities, who wandered whistling over the lower floor, while his mind’s eye saw, beyond the litter of boards and brick and demolished partitions, the emerging visage of a great institution.  And Mr. Dayne rarely failed to climb the stairs for a little chat with the young man in the polished coat who, under promise of secrecy, had called these wonders into being.

More regular were the visits of Hon. Samuel O’Neill, desirous of talking over the state of the Union, particularly as touching the new advanced labor law he was now beginning to draft—­“stiffest factory legislation ever passed in the South.”  And sometimes, when the condition of the sick permitted it, these two would slip away from the Dabney House for a welcome swim, with a growing swarm of boys behind; for Vivian had been the best swimmer on the river in his day, and still did things from the springboard which many lads with two sound feet could not copy.  So diversion from the medical grind was not wanting.  And once in June, the doctor lunched with Mr. Dayne at Berringer’s, and twice he was dragged off to supper at the Cooneys’ and enjoyed himself very much, and once he took Sunday dinner with his aunt, Mrs. Mason, and his little Mason cousins:  only that time he was called away from the table before dessert, and got back to South Street just a minute before Mrs. Meeghan died....

The Garlands rarely saw their boarder now except at mealtimes, and by no means always then.  Kern, for her part, was off to the Works at quarter to seven each morning, and had stopped coming home for dinner since the heat got so bad.  However, the women observed him, and talked him over of nights as they washed the dishes in the new detached kitchen.  For the Garland menage boasted this moderate convenience now, directly attributable to the remarkable growth of Receipts (voluntary) which had reached $21.75 by the book for the single month of June.  It was agreed that Mr. V.V. was not so jokey at the supper-table as formerly, and looked po’ly, in fine, and no wonder, the heat and all, and the way he let Hazens and Epsteins roust him out of bed in the middle of his sleep.