A Little Girl in Tears by Ellis Parker Butler

Bored with his comfortable life, wealthy clubman Morley Smith goes hunting for excitement on a drizzly night, deliberately straying into New York's East Side and climbing a dark tenement stair as if danger were an amusement. Instead of the adventure he expects, he finds a bare, poverty-stricken room and a pale teenage girl in tears, who mistakes him first for an undertaker and then for a man named Mr. Cardigan. Morley, intrigued and uneasy, plays along just enough to keep the encounter alive, only to discover that the girl is distraught over someone across the hall and is close to collapse. When she faints, he carries her to the couch, and the situation grows more intimate and serious than his reckless outing had prepared him for. A rough young man arrives, revealing himself as her former sweetheart, John Dredd, and his urgent concern shows that the girl's distress comes from hardship and neglect, not scandal. Mistaken now for a doctor, Morley is drawn into an improvised rescue as illness, poverty, and unfinished loyalties begin to surface. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.