Are you coming up-town either of you fellows?
I'll give you a lift as far as Seventy-second Street, Plank." "Tell you what we'll do," said Fleetwood, impulsively, turning to Plank: "We'll drive down town, you and I, and we'll look up poor old Siward! Shall we?
He's probably all alone in that God-forsaken red brick family tomb! Shall we?
How about it, Plank ?" O'Hara turned impatiently on his heel with a gesture of adieu, climbed into his electric hansom, and went buzzing away up the avenue.
"I'd like to, but I don't think I know Mr.Siward well enough to do that," said Plank diffidently.

He hesitated, colouring up.

"He might misunderstand my going with you--as a liberty--which perhaps I might not have ventured on had he been less--less unfortunate." Again Fleetwood warmed toward the ruddy, ponderous young man beside him.
"See here," he said, "you are going as a friend of mine--if you care to look at it that way." "Thank you," said Plank; "I should be very glad to go in that way." The Siward house was old only in the comparative Manhattan meaning of the word; for in New York nothing is really very old, except the faces of the young men.
Decades ago it had been considered a big house, and it was still so spoken of--a solid, dingy, red brick structure, cubical in proportions, surmounted by heavy chimneys, the depth of its sunken windows hinting of the thickness of wall and foundation.

Window-curtains of obsolete pattern, all alike, and all drawn, masked the blank panes.

Three massive wistaria-vines, the gnarled stems as thick as tree-trunks, crawled upward to the roof, dividing the facade equally, and furnishing some relief to its flatness, otherwise unbroken except by the deep reveals of window and door.