Kitabı oku: «The Girl from Sunset Ranch: or, Alone in a Great City», sayfa 7

Half asleep as she was, she jumped up and ran to the door. When she opened it, it seemed as though the sound was far down the main corridor – and she thought she could see the entire length of that passage. At least, there was a great window at the far end, and the moonlight looked ghostily in. No shadow crossed this band of light, and yet the rustle and step continued after she reached her door and opened it.

Then —

Was that a door closed softly in the distance? She could not be sure. After a minute or two one thing she was sure of, however; she was getting cold here in the draught, so she scurried back to bed, covered her ears, and went to sleep again.

Helen got up the next morning with one well-defined determination. She would put into practice her uncle’s suggestion. She would buy one of the cheap but showy dresses which shopgirls and minor clerks had to buy to keep up appearances.

It was a very serious trouble to Helen that she was not to buy and disport herself in pretty frocks and hats. The desire to dress prettily and tastefully is born in most girls – just as surely as is the desire to breathe. And Helen was no exception.

She was obstinate, however, and could keep to her purpose. Let the Starkweathers think she was poor. Let them continue to think so until her play was all over and she was ready to go home again.

Her experience in the great city had told Helen already that she could never be happy there. She longed for the ranch, and for the Rose pony – even for Big Hen Billings and Sing and the rag-head, Jo-Rab, and Manuel and Jose, and all the good-hearted, honest “punchers” who loved her and who would no more have hurt her feelings than they would have made an infant cry.

She longed to have somebody call her “Snuggy” and to smile upon her in good-fellowship. As she walked the streets nobody appeared to heed her. If they did, their expression of countenance merely showed curiosity, or a scorn of her clothes.

She was alone. She had never felt so much alone when miles from any other human being, as she sometimes had been on the range. What had Dud said about this? That one could be very much alone in the big city? Dud was right.

She wished that she had Dud Stone’s address. She surely would have communicated with him now, for he was probably back in New York by this time.

However, there was just one person whom she had met in New York who seemed to the girl from Sunset Ranch as being “all right.” And when she made up her mind to do as her uncle had directed about the new frock, it was of this person Helen naturally thought.

Sadie Goronsky! The girl who had shown herself so friendly the night Helen had come to town. She worked in a store where they sold ladies’ clothing. With no knowledge of the cheaper department stores than those she had seen on the avenue, it seemed quite the right thing to Helen’s mind for her to search out Sadie and her store.

So, after an early breakfast taken in Mr. Lawdor’s little room, and under the ministrations of that kind old man, Helen left the house – by the area door as requested – and started downtown.

She didn’t think of riding. Indeed, she had no idea how far Madison Street was. But she remembered the route the taxicab had taken uptown that first evening, and she could not easily lose her way.

And there was so much for the girl from the ranch to see – so much that was new and curious to her – that she did not mind the walk; although it took her until almost noon, and she was quite tired when she got to Chatham Square.

Here she timidly inquired of a policeman, who kindly crossed the wide street with her and showed her the way. On the southern side of Madison Street she wandered, curiously alive to everything about the district, and the people in it, that made them both seem so strange to her.

“A dress, lady! A hat, lady!”

The buxom Jewish girls and women, who paraded the street before the shops for which they worked, would give her little peace. Yet it was all done good-naturedly, and when she smiled and shook her head they smiled, too, and let her pass.

Suddenly she saw the sturdy figure of Sadie Goronsky right ahead. She had stopped a rather over-dressed, loud-voiced woman with a child, and Helen heard a good deal of the conversation while she waited for Sadie (whose back was toward her) to be free.

The “puller-in” and the possible customer wrangled some few moments, both in Yiddish and broken English; but Sadie finally carried her point – and the child – into the store! The woman had to follow her offspring, and once inside some of the clerks got hold of her and Sadie could come forth to lurk for another possible customer.

“Well, see who’s here!” exclaimed the Jewish girl, catching sight of Helen. “What’s the matter, Miss? Did they turn you out of your uncle’s house upon Madison Avenyer? I never did expect to see you again.”

“But I expected to see you again, Sadie; I told you I’d come,” said Helen, simply.

“So it wasn’t just a josh; eh?”

“I always keep my word,” said the girl from the West.

“Chee!” gasped Sadie. “We ain’t so partic’lar around here. But I’m glad to see you, Miss, just the same. Be-lieve me!”

CHAPTER XIV
A NEW WORLD

The two girls stood on the sidewalk and let the tide of busy humanity flow by unnoticed. Both were healthy types of youth – one from the open ranges of the Great West, the other from a land far, far to the East.

Helen Morrell was brown, smiling, hopeful-looking; but she certainly was not “up to date” in dress and appearance. The black-eyed and black-haired Russian girl was just as well developed for her age and as rugged as she could be; but in her cheap way her frock was the “very latest thing,” her hair was dressed wonderfully, and the air of “city smartness” about her made the difference between her and Helen even more marked.

“I never s’posed you’d come down here,” said Sadie again.

“You asked was I turned out of my uncle’s house,” responded Helen, seriously. “Well, it does about amount to that.”

“Oh, no! Never!” cried the other girl.

“Let me tell you,” said Helen, whose heart was so full that she longed for a confidant. Besides, Sadie Goronsky would never know the Starkweather family and their friends, and she felt free to speak fully. So, without much reserve, she related her experiences in her uncle’s house.

“Now, ain’t they the mean things!” ejaculated Sadie, referring to the cousins. “And I suppose they’re awful rich?”

“I presume so. The house is very large,” declared Helen.

“And they’ve got loads and loads of dresses, too?” demanded the working girl.

“Oh, yes. They are very fashionably dressed,” Helen told her. “But see! I am going to have a new dress myself. Uncle Starkweather gave me ten dollars.”

“Chee!” ejaculated Sadie. “Wouldn’t it give him a cramp in his pocket-book to part with so much mazouma?”

“Mazouma?”

“That’s Hebrew for money,” laughed Sadie. “But you do need a dress. Where did you get that thing you’ve got on?”

“Out home,” replied Helen. “I see it isn’t very fashionable.”

“Say! we got through sellin’ them things to greenies two years back,” declared Sadie.

“You haven’t been at work all that time; have you?” gasped the girl from the ranch.

“Sure. I got my working papers four years ago. You see, I looked a lot older than I really was, and comin’ across from the old country all us children changed our ages, so’t we could go right to work when we come here without having to spend all day in school. We had an uncle what come over first, and he told us what to do.”

Helen listened to this with some wonder. She felt perfectly safe with Sadie, and would have trusted her, if it were necessary, with the money she had hidden away in her closet at Uncle Starkweather’s; yet the other girl looked upon the laws of the land to which she had come for freedom as merely harsh rules to be broken at one’s convenience.

“Of course,” said Sadie, “I didn’t work on the sidewalk here at first. I worked back in Old Yawcob’s shop – making changes in the garments for fussy customers. I was always quick with my needle.

“Then I helped the salesladies. But business was slack, and people went right by our door, and I jumped out one day and started to pull ’em in. And I was better at it —

“Good-day, ma’am! Will you look at a beautiful skirt – just the very latest style – we’ve only got a few of them for samples?” She broke off and left Helen to stand wondering while Sadie chaffered with another woman, who had hesitated a trifle as she passed the shop.

“Oh, no, ma’am! You was no greenie. I could tell that at once. That’s why I spoke English to you yet,” Sadie said, flattering the prospective buyer, and smiling at her pleasantly. “If you will just step in and see these skirts – or a two-piece suit if you will?”

Helen observed her new friend with amazement. Although she knew Sadie could be no older than herself, she used the tact of long business experience in handling the woman. And she got her into the store, too!

“I wash my hands of ’em when they get inside,” she said, laughing, and coming back to Helen. “If Old Yawcob and his wife and his salesladies can’t hold ’em, it isn’t my fault, you understand. I’m about the youngest puller-in there is along Madison Street – although that little hunchback in front of the millinery shop yonder looks younger.”

“But you don’t try to pull me in,” said Helen, laughing. “And I’ve got ten whole dollars to spend.”

“That’s right. But then, you see, you’re my friend, Miss,” said Sadie. “I want to be sure you get your money’s worth. So I’m going with you when you buy your dress – that is, if you’ll let me.”

“Let you? Why, I’d dearly love to have you advise me,” declared the Western girl. “And don’t —don’t– call me ‘Miss.’ I’m Helen Morrell, I tell you.”

“All right. If you say so. But, you know, you are from Madison Avenyer just the same.”

“No. I’m from a great big ranch out West.”

“That’s like a farm – yes? I gotter cousin that works on a farm over on Long Island. It’s a big farm – it’s eighty acres. Is that farm you come from as big as that?”

Helen nodded and did not smile at the girl’s ignorance. “Very much bigger than eighty acres,” she said. “You see, it has to be, for we raise cattle instead of vegetables.”

“Well, I guess I don’t know much about it,” admitted Sadie, frankly. “All I know is this city and mostly this part of it down here on the East Side. We all have to work so hard, you know. But we’re getting along better than we did at first, for more of us children can work.

“And now I want you should go home with me for dinner, Helen – yes! It is my dinner hour quick now; and then we will have time to pick you out a bargain for a dress. Sure! You’ll come?”

“If I won’t be imposing on you?” said Helen, slowly.

“Huh! That’s all right. We’ll have enough to eat this noon. And it ain’t so Jewish, either, for father don’t come home till night. Father’s awful religious; but I tell mommer she must be up-to-date and have some ’Merican style about her. I got her to leave off her wig yet. Catch me wearin’ a wig when I’m married just to make me look ugly. Not!”

All this rather puzzled Helen; but she was too polite to ask questions. She knew vaguely that Jewish people followed peculiar rabbinical laws and customs; but what they were she had no idea. However, she liked Sadie, and it mattered nothing to Helen what the East Side girl’s faith or bringing up had been. Sadie was kind, and friendly, and was really the only person in all this big city in whom the ranch girl could place the smallest confidence.

Sadie ran into the store for a moment and soon a big woman with an unctuous smile, a ruffled white apron about as big as a postage stamp, and her gray hair dressed as remarkably as Sadie’s own, came out upon the sidewalk to take the young girl’s place.

“Can’t I sell you somedings, lady?” she said to the waiting Helen.

“Now, don’t you go and run my customer in, Ma Finkelstein!” cried Sadie, running out and hugging the big woman. “Helen is my friend and she’s going home to eat mit me.”

“Ach! you are already a United Stater yet,” declared the big woman, laughing. “Undt the friends you have it from Number Five Av’noo – yes?”

“You guessed it pretty near right,” cried Sadie. “Helen lives on Madison Avenyer – and it ain’t Madison Avenyer uptown, neither!”

She slipped her hand in Helen’s and bore her off to the tenement house in which Helen had had her first adventure in the great city.

“Come on up,” said Sadie, hospitably. “You look tired, and I bet you walked clear down here?”

“Yes, I did,” admitted Helen.

“Some o’ mommer’s soup mit lentils will rest you, I bet. It ain’t far yet – only two flights.”

Helen followed her cheerfully. But she wondered if she was doing just right in letting this friendly girl believe that she was just as poor as the Starkweathers thought she was. Yet, on the other hand, wouldn’t Sadie Goronsky have felt embarrassed and have been afraid to be her friend, if she knew that Helen Morrell was a very, very wealthy girl and had at her command what would seem to the Russian girl “untold wealth”?

“I’ll pay her for this,” thought Helen, with the first feeling of real happiness she had experienced since leaving the ranch. “She shall never be sorry that she was kind to me.”

So she followed Sadie into the humble home of the latter on the third floor of the tenement with a smiling face and real warmth at her heart. In Yiddish the downtown girl explained rapidly her acquaintance with “the Gentile.” But, as she had told Helen, Sadie’s mother had begun to break away from some of the traditions of her people. She was fast becoming “a United Stater,” too.

She was a handsome, beaming woman, and she was as generous-hearted as Sadie herself. The rooms were a little steamy, for Mrs. Goronsky had been doing the family wash that morning. But the table was set neatly and the food that came on was well prepared and – to Helen – much more acceptable than the dainties she had been having at Uncle Starkweather’s.

The younger children, who appeared for the meal, were right from the street where they had been playing, or from work in neighboring factories, and were more than a little grimy. But they were not clamorous and they ate with due regard to “manners.”

“Ve haf nine, Mees,” said Mrs. Goronsky, proudly. “Undt they all are healt’y —ach! so healt’y. It takes mooch to feed them yet.”

“Don’t tell about it, Mommer” cried Sadie. “It aint stylish to have big fam’lies no more. Don’t I tell you?”

“What about that Preesident we hadt – that Teddy Sullivan – what said big fam’lies was a good d’ing? Aindt that enough? Sure, Sarah, a Preesident iss stylish.”

“Oh, Mommer!” screamed Sadie. “You gotcher politics mixed. ‘Sullivan’ is the district leader wot gifs popper a job; but ‘Teddy’ was the President yet. You ain’t never goin’ to be real American.”

But her mother only laughed. Indeed, the light-heartedness of these poor people was a revelation to Helen. She had supposed vaguely that very poor people must be all the time serious, if not actually in tears.

“Now, Helen, we’ll rush right back to the shop and I’ll make Old Yawcob sell you a bargain. She’s goin’ to get her new dress, Mommer. Ain’t that fine?”

“Sure it iss,” declared the good woman. “Undt you get her a bargain, Sarah.”

“Don’t call me ‘Sarah,’ Mommer!” cried the daughter. “It ain’t stylish, I tell you. Call me ‘Sadie.’”

Her mother kissed her on both plump cheeks. “What matters it, my little lamb?” she said, in their own tongue. “Mother love makes any name sweet.”

Helen did not, of course, understand these words; but the caress, the look on their faces, and the way Sadie returned her mother’s kiss made a great lump come into the orphan girl’s throat. She could hardly find her way in the dim hall to the stairway, she was so blinded by tears.

CHAPTER XV
“STEP – PUT; STEP – PUT”

An hour later Helen was dressed in a two-piece suit, cut in what a chorus of salesladies, including old Mrs. Finkelstein and Sadie herself, declared were most “stylish” lines – and it did not cost her ten dollars, either! Indeed, Sadie insisted upon going with her to a neighboring millinery store and purchasing a smart little hat for $1.59, which set off the new suit very nicely.

“Sure, this old hat and suit of yours is wort’ a lot more money, Helen,” declared the Russian girl. “But they ain’t just the style, yuh see. And style is everything to a girl. Why, nobody’d take you for a greenie now!”

Helen was quite wise enough to know that she had never been dressed so cheaply before; but she recognized, too, the truth of her friend’s statement.

“Now, you take the dress home, and the hat. Maybe you can find a cheap tailor who will make over the dress. There’s enough material in it. That’s an awful wide skirt, you know.”

“But I couldn’t walk in a skirt as narrow as the one you have on, Sadie.”

“Chee! if it was stylish,” confessed Sadie, “I’d find a way to walk in a piece of stove-pipe!” and she giggled.

So Helen left for uptown with her bundles, wearing her new suit and hat. She took a Fourth Avenue car and got out only a block from her uncle’s house. As she hurried through the side street and came to the Madison Avenue corner, she came face-to-face with Flossie, coming home from school with a pile of books under her arm.

Flossie looked quite startled when she saw her cousin. Her eyes grew wide and she swept the natty looking, if cheaply-dressed Western girl, with an appreciative glance.

“Goodness me! What fine feathers!” she cried. “You’ve been loading up with new clothes – eh? Say, I like that dress.”

“Better than the caliker one?” asked Helen, slily.

“You’re not so foolish as to believe I liked that,” returned Flossie, coolly. “I told Belle and Hortense that you weren’t as dense as they seemed to think you.”

“Thanks!” said Helen, drily.

“But that dress is just in the mode,” repeated Flossie, with some admiration.

“Your father’s kindness enabled me to get it,” said Helen, briefly.

“Humph!” said Flossie, frankly. “I guess it didn’t cost you much, then.”

Helen did not reply to this comment; but as she turned to go down to the basement door, Flossie caught her by the arm.

“Don’t you do that!” she exclaimed. “Belle can be pretty mean sometimes. You come in at the front door with me.”

“No,” said Helen, smiling. “You come in at the area door with me. It’s easier, anyway. There’s a maid just opening it.”

So the two girls entered the house together. They were late to lunch – indeed, Helen did not wish any; but she did not care to explain why she was not hungry.

“What’s the matter with you, Flossie?” demanded Hortense. “We’ve done eating, Belle and I. And if you wish your meals here, Helen, please get here on time for them.”

“You mind your own business!” cried Flossie, suddenly taking up the cudgels for her cousin as well as herself. “You aren’t the boss, Hortense! I got kept after school, anyway. And cook can make something hot for me and Helen.”

“You need to be kept after school – from the kind of English you use,” sniffed her sister.

“I don’t care! I hate the old studies!” declared Flossie, slamming her books down upon the table. “I don’t see why I have to go to school at all. I’m going to ask Pa to take me out. I need a rest.”

Which was very likely true, for Miss Flossie was out almost every night to some party, or to the theater, or at some place which kept her up very late. She had no time for study, and therefore was behind in all her classes. That day she had been censured for it at school – and when they took a girl to task for falling behind in studies at that school, she was very far behind, indeed!

Flossie grumbled about her hard lot all through luncheon. Helen kept her company; then, when it was over, she slipped up to her own room with her bundles. Both Hortense and Belle had taken a good look at her, however, and they plainly approved of her appearance.

“She’s not such a dowdy as she seemed,” whispered Hortense to the oldest sister.

“No,” admitted Belle. “But that’s an awful cheap dress she bought.”

“I guess she didn’t have much to spend,” laughed Hortense. “Pa wasn’t likely to be very liberal. It puzzles me why he should have kept her here at all.”

“He says it is his duty,” scoffed Belle. “Now, you know Pa! He never was so worried about duty before; was he?”

These girls, brought up as they were, steeped in selfishness and seeing their father likewise so selfish, had no respect for their parent. Nor could this be wondered at.

Going up to her room that afternoon Helen met Mrs. Olstrom coming down. The housekeeper started when she saw the young girl, and drew back. But Helen had already seen the great tray of dishes the housekeeper carried. And she wondered.

Who took their meals up on this top floor? The maids who slept here were all accounted for. She had seen them about the house. And Gregson, too. Of course Mr. Lawdor and Mrs. Olstrom had their own rooms below.

Then who could it be who was being served on this upper floor? Helen was more than a little curious. The sounds she had heard the night before dove-tailed in her mind with these soiled dishes on the tray.

She was almost tempted to walk through the long corridor in which she thought she had heard the scurrying footsteps pass the night before. Yet, suppose she was caught by Mrs. Olstrom – or by anybody else – peering about the house?

“That wouldn’t be very nice,” mused the girl.

“Because these people think I am rude and untaught, is no reason why I should display any real rudeness.”

She was very curious, however; the thought of the tray-load of dishes remained in her mind all day.

At dinner that night even Mr. Starkweather gave Helen a glance of approval when she appeared in her new frock.

“Ahem!” he said. “I see you have taken my advice, Helen. We none of us can afford to forget what is due to custom. You are much more presentable.”

“Thank you, Uncle Starkweather,” replied Helen, demurely. “But out our way we say: ‘Fine feathers don’t make fine birds.’”

“You needn’t fret,” giggled Flossie. “Your feather’s aren’t a bit too fine.”

But Flossie’s eyes were red, and she plainly had been crying.

“I hate the old books!” she said, suddenly. “Pa, why do I have to go to school any more?”

“Because I am determined you shall, young lady,” said Mr. Starkweather, firmly. “We all have to learn.”

“Hortense doesn’t go.”

“But you are not Hortense’s age,” returned her father, coolly. “Remember that. And I must have better reports of your conduct in school than have reached me lately,” he added.

Flossie sulked over the rest of her dinner. Helen, going up slowly to her room later, saw the door of her youngest cousin’s room open, and glancing in, beheld Flossie with her head on her book, crying hard.

Each of these girls had a beautiful room of her own. Flossie’s was decorated in pink, with chintz hangings, a lovely bed, bookshelves, a desk of inlaid wood, and everything to delight the eye and taste of any girl. Beside the common room Helen occupied, this of Flossie’s was a fairy palace.

But Helen was naturally tender-hearted. She could not bear to see the younger girl crying. She ventured to step inside the door and whisper:

“Flossie?”

Up came the other’s head, her face flushed and wet and her brow a-scowl.

“What do you want?” she demanded, quickly.

“Nothing. Unless I can help you. And if so, that is what I want,” said the ranch girl, softly.

“Goodness me! You can’t help me with algebra. What do I want to know higher mathematics for? I’ll never have use for such knowledge.”

“I don’t suppose we can ever learn too much,” said Helen, quietly.

“Huh! Lots you know about it. You never were driven to school against your will.”

“No. Whenever I got a chance to go I was glad.”

“Maybe I’d be glad, too, if I lived on a ranch,” returned Flossie, scornfully.

Helen came nearer to the desk and sat down beside her.

“You don’t look a bit pretty with your eyes all red and hot. Crying isn’t going to help,” she said, smiling.

“I suppose not,” grumbled Flossie, ungrateful of tone.

“Come, let me get some water and cologne and bathe your face.” Helen jumped up and went to the tiny bathroom. “Now, I’ll play maid for you, Flossie.”

“Oh, all right,” said the younger girl. “I suppose, as you say, crying isn’t going to help.”

“Not at all. No amount of tears will solve a problem in algebra. And you let me see the questions. You see,” added Helen, slowly, beginning to bathe her cousin’s forehead and swollen eyes, “we once had a very fine school-teacher at the ranch. He was a college professor. But he had weak lungs and he came out there to Montana to rest.”

“That’s good!” murmured Flossie, meaning bathing process, for she was not listening much to Helen’s remarks.

“I knew it would make you feel better. But now, let me see these algebra problems. I took it up a little when – when Professor Payton was at the ranch.”

“You didn’t!” cried Flossie, in wonder.

“Let me see them,” pursued her cousin, nodding.

She had told the truth – as far as she went. After Professor Payton had left the ranch and Helen had gone to Denver to school, she had showed a marked taste for mathematics and had been allowed to go far ahead of her fellow-pupils in that study.

Now, at a glance, she saw what was the matter with Flossie’s attempts to solve the problems. She slipped into a seat beside the younger girl again and, in a few minutes, showed Flossie just how to solve them.

“Why, Helen! I didn’t suppose you knew so much,” said Flossie, in surprise.

“You see, that is something I had a chance to learn between times – when I wasn’t roping cows or breaking ponies,” said Helen, drily.

“Humph! I don’t believe you did either of those vulgar things,” declared Flossie, suddenly.

“You are mistaken. I do them both, and do them well,” returned Helen, gravely. “But they are not vulgar. No more vulgar than your sister Belle’s golf. It is outdoor exercise, and living outdoors as much as one can is a sort of religion in the West.”

“Well,” said Flossie, who had recovered her breath now. “I don’t care what you do outdoors. You can do algebra in the house! And I’m real thankful to you, Cousin Helen.”

“You are welcome, Flossie,” returned the other, gravely; but then she went her way to her own room at the top of the house. Flossie did not ask her to remain after she had done all she could for her.

But Helen had found plenty of reading matter in the house. Her cousins and uncle might ignore her as they pleased. With a good book in her hand she could forget all her troubles.

Now she slipped into her kimono, propped herself up in bed, turned the gas-jet high, and lost herself in the adventures of her favorite heroine. The little clock on the mantel ticked on unheeded. The house grew still. The maids came up to bed chattering. But still Helen read on.

She had forgotten the sounds she had heard in the old house at night. Mrs. Olstrom had mentioned that there were “queer stories” about the Starkweather mansion. But Helen would not have thought of them at this time, had something not rattled her doorknob and startled her.

“Somebody wants to come in,” was the girl’s first thought, and she hopped out of bed and ran to unlock it.

Then she halted, with her hand upon the knob. A sound outside had arrested her. But it was not the sound of somebody trying the latch.

Instead she plainly heard the mysterious “step – put; step – put” again. Was it descending the stairs? It seemed to grow fainter as she listened.

At length the girl – somewhat shaken – reached for the key of her door again, and turned it. Then she opened it and peered out.

The corridor was faintly illuminated. The stairway itself was quite dark, for there was no light in the short passage below called “the ghost-walk.”

The girl, in her slippers, crept to the head of the flight. There she could hear the steady, ghostly footstep from below. No other sound within the great mansion reached her ears. It was queer.

To and fro the odd step went. It apparently drew nearer, then receded – again and again.

Helen could not see any of the corridor from the top of the flight. So she began to creep down, determined to know for sure if there really was something or somebody there.

Nor was she entirely unafraid now. The mysterious sounds had got upon her nerves. Whether they were supernatural, or natural, she was determined to solve the mystery here and now.

Half-way down the stair she halted. The sound of the ghostly step was at the far end of the hall. But it would now return, and the girl could see (her eyes having become used to the dim light) more than half of the passage.

There was the usual rustling sound at the end of the passage. Then the steady “step – put” approached.