Street neighborhood, a region still retaining some of the quaintness and friendly feeling of Old New York, though the tenement districts were encroaching upon it block by block. The neighborhood knew and liked Pop. They went out of their way to ride in his car and hand him the nickels he needed so badly.
At night when Nellie, Pop's ancient mare, was testing in her stall and the anachronistic vehicle she pulled stood in the shadows of the car barn's leaky roof, the men of De Lacey Street often assembled in the car to play pinochle, talk and smoke their pipes with Pop. It was a sort of club house on wheels.
In the twelfth year of Pop's career as driver of the horse car, his granddaughter, Jane, had come to live with him. Jane was then a bright-eyed, darkhaired girl of ten. Her folks had a small farm upstate in Pennsylvania and it was partly to relieve her hard-working father of a mouth to feed and partly to keep house for Pop, who was growing steadily older and unable to take care of himself, that she had come. She was the apple of his eye. He had now for five years resisted her importunities that she go to work and help earn money for their support. He had protested that he was well able to take care of both of them financially, though he had within the last few days been forced to yield to her at least to the extent of allowing her to rent out the spare room in the tiny flat they occupied on De Lacey Street. Jane was even now looking for a boarder.
