From nine o'clock till dark the crowds came and went.

All Polk Street seemed to have invaded the suite, lured on by the red flag that waved from the front windows.

It was a fete, a veritable holiday, for the whole neighborhood.

People with no thought of buying presented themselves.

Young women--the candy-store girls and florist's apprentices--came to see the fun, walking arm in arm from room to room, making jokes about the pretty lithographs and mimicking the picture of the two little girls saying their prayers.
"Look here," they would cry, "look here what she used for curtains--NOTTINGHAM lace, actually! Whoever thinks of buying Nottingham lace now-a-days?
Say, don't that JAR you ?" "And a melodeon," another one would exclaim, lifting the sheet.