The Street, which was busy at the time deciding whether to leave the old
sidewalks or to put down cement ones, had one evening of mad excitement
over the matter,--of K., not the sidewalks,--and then had accepted the new
situation.

But over the news of K.'s approaching departure it mourned. What was the
matter with things, anyhow? Here was Christine's marriage, which had
promised so well,--awnings and palms and everything,--turning out badly.
True, Palmer Howe was doing better, but he would break out again. And
Johnny Rosenfeld was dead, so that his mother came on washing-days, and
brought no cheery gossip; but bent over her tubs dry-eyed and silent--even
the approaching move to a larger house failed to thrill her. There was
Tillie, too. But one did not speak of her. She was married now, of
course; but the Street did not tolerate such a reversal of the usual
processes as Tillie had indulged in. It censured Mrs. McKee severely for
having been, so to speak, and accessory after the fact.

The Street made a resolve to keep K., if possible. If he had shown any
"high and mightiness," as they called it, since the change in his estate,
it would have let him go without protest. But when a man is the real
thing,--so that the newspapers give a column to his having been in the city
almost two years,--and still goes about in the same shabby clothes, with
the same friendly greeting for every one, it demonstrates clearly, as the
barytone put it, that "he's got no swelled head on him; that's sure."