Apologies were in order from us to them; I would make these apologies.
I was prepared to confront poverty in this bare and comfortless-looking abode of decayed gentility.

But I did not expect quite so many evidences of it as met my eyes as the door swung slowly open some time after my persistent knock, and I beheld Miss Charity's meager figure outlined against walls and a flight of uncarpeted stairs such as I had never seen before out of a tenement house.

I may have dropped my eyes, but I recovered myself immediately.

Marking the slow awakening of pleasure in the wan old face as she recognized me, I uttered some apology for my early call and then waited to see if she would welcome me in.
She not only did so, but did it with such a sudden breaking up of her rigidity into the pliancy of a naturally hospitable nature, that my heart was touched, and I followed her into the great bare apartment, which must have once answered the purposes of a drawing-room, with very different feelings from those with which I had been accustomed to look upon her face in the old attic window.
"I should like to see your sister, too," I said, as she hastily, but with a certain sort of ceremony, too, pushed forward one of the ancient chairs which stood at long intervals about the room.

"I have not been your neighbor very long, but I should like to pay my respects to both of you." I had purposely spoken with the formal precision she had been accustomed to in her earlier days, and I could see how perceptibly her self-respect returned at this echo of the past, giving her a sudden dignity which made me forget for the moment her neglected appearance.
"I will summon my sister," she returned, disappearing quietly from the room.
I waited fifteen minutes, then Miss Thankful entered, dressed in her very best, followed by my first acquaintance in her same gown, but with a little cap on her head.