No. 99 at last revealed itself, between Nos. 7
and 2,--a great six-story wooden tinder-box, with
clothes-lines mysterious behind, open doors in front,
long passages running through, three doors on each side
of a passage, and the wondering heads of eleven women who
belonged to five different races and spoke in six
different languages appearing from their eleven windows,
as Mike and Nora and the two bays all stopped at one and
the same moment at the door.
Mike was already anxious about his time, for he was
to be at the custom-house an hour away or more at eleven
sharp. But he selected a certain Widow Flynn from the
eleven white-capped women; he explained to her briefly
that John McLaughlin was to be found; he told Nora for
the thirty-seventh time that all was right and that she
must not cry; he looked at his watch again, rather
anxiously, mounted his box, and drove swiftly away.
He was the one thread which bound Nora to this world.
And this thread broke before her eyes.
Mrs. Flynn affected to be cheerful. But she was not
cheerful. Mrs. Flynn was a prominent person in her
sodality. And well she knew that if any John
McLaughlin in those parts were expecting any sister from
home, she should know him and where he lived. Well she
knew, also, that John McLaughlin, the mason, was born in
Glasgow; that John McLaughlin, who is on the city work,
had all his family around him, and, most distinct of all,
she knew that no McLaughlin, sisterless or many-sistered,
lived in this beehive which she lived in, though it were
99 Linwood Street.
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