Page:While Caroline Was Growing.djvu/110



The threshold was greasy and worn, the stairs covered with faded oil cloth, the side walls defaced and over-scrawled. At the head of the stairs three dingy doors opened in three different directions, and a soiled card on the middle one bore the name of Hunt. A man's voice somewhere behind it talked in a strange loud sing-song; he seemed to be telling a long, confusing story. At the moment of Caroline's timid knock he was saying over and over again,

"Isn't that so? Isn't that so? Who wouldn't have done the same? Put your finger on the place where I made the mistake! Will you? Will anybody? I ask it as a favor—"

"Hush, won't you?" a woman's voice interrupted, "wasn't that a knock?"

Caroline knocked again.

There was a hasty shuffling and a key turned in the door.

"Who is it?" the woman's voice asked. "What do you want? The auction's all over—there's nothing left. We're moving out to-morrow."

Surprise held Caroline dumb. How could one have an auction in such a place? At auctions