A cat, grey and striped, and wearing a dog collar of nickel and red leather, issued from the coatroom and picked her way across the floor. Evidently she was in a mood of the most ingratiating friendliness, and as one after another of the departing traders spoke to her, raised her tail in the air and arched her back against the legs of the empty chairs. The janitor put in an appearance, lowering the tall colored windows with a long rod. A noise of hammering and the scrape of saws began to issue from a corner where a couple of carpenters tinkered about one of the sample tables.

Then at last even the settlement clerks took themselves off. At once there was a great silence, broken only by the harsh rasp of the carpenters’ saws and the voice of the janitor exchanging jokes with the washerwomen. The sound of footsteps in distant quarters reechoed as if in a church.

The washerwomen invaded the floor, spreading soapy and steaming water before them. Over by the sample tables a negro porter in shirtsleeves swept entire bushels of spilled wheat, crushed, broken, and sodden, into his dust pans.