The narrator exited the subway in a daze, unsure how to get back to his boarding house. As he stumbled into the street, he met a kind woman named Miss Mary. She noticed his weak, disoriented condition and brought him inside her house to recover.

The narrator fell asleep immediately upon getting up the steps and awoke some time later to find Miss Mary sitting patiently across the room and reading a newspaper. He tried to leave, intent on looking for a job at once, but she insisted he eat first. The two chatted, and Miss Mary told the narrator that young Black people were the ones who would make the changes that finally benefitted all of them. If he needed a room somewhere other than Men’s House, she added, she had a vacancy.

When the narrator finally returned to Men’s House after his ordeal, he found that he needed to relocate to Miss Mary’s place sooner than expected—after mistaking a man in the lobby for Dr. Bledsdoe, he had an altercation that got him banned from the property for ninety-nine years.