Lucky thing Stephen wasn't home, or it never could be made to go around.

Home! As if anybody could call this a home!

Phyllis slammed the bread box shut, took another drink of water, and went into the little front room, which was both living room and Bob's bedroom. The squalid apartment contained only one other room, a small bedroom, nearly full with its two beds, a bureau, and a dresser. They could just barely crowd around between the furniture. One had to sit on the side of the bed to open the drawers of the bureau. Phyllis and Mother slept in one of the beds and Melissa and Rosalie in the other. It was just like berths in a sleeper. Phyllis sighed. Would they ever go on nice long vacation journeys in a sleeper again? Would they ever have a car like other people and drive away to the shore for weekends and trips?

She went to the window and looked out on the dismal little street, sordid and grimy. It was a narrow street with rows of two-story brick houses facing one another across uneven old brick-paved sidewalks where on certain days one had to pick one's way between garbage pails and trash cans. Such a terrible place for a family of a college professor to have to live, even for a little while! Would Father ever get well and be able to come out of the hospital? Would he ever be able to get back to teaching and they all live in a respectable house again? Low down, that was what this was! Just plain low down and disgusting, like drunkards' homes. That was what Phyllis thought. Her experience in drunkards' homes had been limited, however. There really were worse streets than Slacker Street, even in that city.

She continued to gaze out of the window, hoping against hope that she would see her mother coming. It had begun to rain, steadily, drearily, which only seemed to accentuate the coldness of the room. The windowpanes had diagonal trickles like tears so that it was hard to see out, but the girl continued to press her cheek against the pane and gaze wistfully up the street. If Mother would only come and bring some good news, somehow!

There were patches of dirty snow in the gutter here and there, and across the road in the narrow passage between two houses, one of which was unoccupied, a drift of snow was banked untidily against the two walls where no one had passed in and out since the winter months.

A gaunt gray cat streaked warily across the road and disappeared down the alley. A little wet mongrel dog hurried down the sidewalk as if on some special errand. A woman under a bent cotton umbrella with a large basket on her arm walked painfully by on the opposite side. She was lame, and she was wearing a man's shoes, which were too large for her. She made slow progress. Her long untidy skirts sloshed drearily about her ankles, drabbling into every puddle she passed. What a sordid thing life was! Tears threatened again, and Phyllis turned with a shiver back to the dreary room, casting an anxious eye about. If she only could do something to make it look a little more cheerful when Mother came back. She would be wet and tired and cold. How wonderful it would be if they could have a fire, an open fire! But the high wooden mantelpiece only sheltered an inadequate little old-fashioned register up which nothing was coming now but cold air. The landlady had gone out for the afternoon evidently, and the fire must have gone out, too.

Phyllis went and put on her old sweater, then she opened the hall door cautiously and listened. There was no sound anywhere, neither baby nor landlady. An odd time to take a baby out in a rain like this, but either that or they were both asleep, which was not likely at this hour of the day. Dared she?

She tiptoed to the woman's door and listened, tapped softly again and listened, but there was no sound save the noise of the landlady's little dog thumping his tail in a friendly way on the floor, whining gently. Yes, they surely were gone and had left the dog in the house to guard it.

Phyllis had never been in the cellar.