“See,” said Annjee. “There’s room enough for us both, and we’ll be saving rent. There’s no closet, but we can drive a few extra nails behind the door. And with the two windows we can get plenty of air these hot nights.”

“It’s nice, mama,” Sandy said, but he had to repeat his statement twice, because another L train thundered past so that he couldn’t hear his own words as he uttered them. “It’s awful nice, mama!”

He took off his coat and sat down on the trunk between the two windows. Annjee came over and kissed him, rubbing her hand across his crinkly brown hair.

“Well, you’re a great big boy now.... Mama’s baby—in long pants. And you’re handsome, just like your father!” She had Jimboy’s picture stuck in a corner of the wash-stand—a postcard photo in his army uniform, in which he looked very boyish and proud, sent from the training-camp before his company went to France. “But I got no time to be setting here petting you, Sandy, even if you have just come. I got to get on back to the hairdressing-parlor to make some money.”

So Annjee went to work again—as she had been off only long enough to meet the train—and Sandy lay down on the bed and slept the hot afternoon away. That evening as a treat they had supper at a restaurant, where Annjee picked carefully from the cheap menu so that their bill wouldn’t be high.

“But don’t think this is regular. We can’t afford it,” she said. “I bring things home and fix them on an oil-stove in the room and spread papers on the trunk for a table. A restaurant supper’s just in honor of you.”

When they came back to the house that evening, Sandy was introduced to Mrs. Harris, their landlady, and to her husband, the elevator-starter, who was to give him the job at the hotel.

“That’s a fine-looking boy you got there,” Mis’ Rogers,” he said, appraising Sandy. “He’ll do pretty well for one of them main lobby cars, since we don’t use nothing but first-class intelligent help down where I am, like I told you. And we has only the best class o’ white folks stoppin’ there, too.... Be up at six in the morning’, buddy, and I’ll take you downtown with me.”

Annjee was tired, so they went upstairs to the back room and lit the gas over the bed, but the frequent roar of the L trains prevented steady conversation and made Sandy jump each time that the long chain of cars thundered by. He hadn’t yet become accustomed to them, or to the vast humming of the city, which was strange to his small-town ears. And he wanted to go out and look around a bit, to walk up and down the streets at night and see what they were like.

“Well, go on if you want to,” said his mother, “but don’t forget this house number. I’m gonna lie down, but I guess I’ll be awake when you come back. Or somebody’ll be setting on the porch and the door’ll be open.”