Lizzie would drag downstairs again, and Susan would return to her
silent contemplation of the street.

She had seen nothing particularly odd or unattractive about the
house in those little-girl days, and it seemed a perfectly normal
establishment to her now. It was home, and it was good to get home
after the long day. She ran up the flight of stairs that the gas-
bead dimly lighted, and up another, where a second gas-jet, this one
without a shade, burned unsteadily and opened the door, at the back
of the third-floor hall, that gave upon the bedroom that she shared
with Mary Lou and Georgianna. The boarding-house was crowded, at
this particular time, and Georgie, who flitted about as a rule to
whatever room chanced to be empty, was now quartered here and slept
on a narrow couch, set at an angle from the bay-window, and covered
with a worn strip of chenille.

It was a shabby room, and necessarily crowded, but it was bright,
and its one window gave an attractive view of little tree-shaded
backyards below, where small tragedies and comedies were continually
being enacted by dogs and babies and cats and the crude little maids
of the neighborhood. Susan enjoyed these thoroughly, and she and
Georgie also liked to watch the girl in the house just behind
theirs, who almost always forgot to draw the shades when she lighted
her gas. Whatever this unconscious neighbor did they found very
amusing.

"Oh, look, Georgie, she's changing her slippers. Don't miss this--
She must be going out to-night!" Susan would quiver with excitement
until her cousin joined her at the window.