s to get clear of your old life. They can't do anything
to you. And tell 'em you inherited a little coin; that's why you're
living so swell. They can't do anything about that either. ... Here's
where we get out. Got a sitting-room, two bedrooms and a bath hired for
you here. But we'll soon move you into a classier hotel."

The taxi had stopped in front of one of the unpretentious, respectable
hotels in the Thirties, just off Fifth Avenue, and Maggie followed the
two men in. This hotel did, indeed, in its people, its furnishings, its
atmosphere, seem sober and commonplace after the Ritzmore; but at the
Ritzmore she had been merely a cigarette-girl, a paid onlooker at the
gayety of others. Here she was a real guest--here her great life was
beginning! Maggie's heart beat wildly.

Up in her sitting-room Barney introduced her to Miss Grierson, then
departed with a significant look at Old Jimmie, saying he would return
presently and leaving Old Jimmie behind. Old Jimmie withdrew into a
corner, turned to the racing part of the Evening Telegram, which,
with the corresponding section of the Morning Telegraph, was his sole
reading, and left Maggie to the society of Miss Grierson.

Maggie studied this strange new being, her hired "companion," with
furtive keenness; and after a few minutes, though she was shyly obedient
in the manner of an untutored orphan from the West, she had no fear of
the other. Miss Grierson was a large, flat-backed woman who was on the
descending slope of middle age. She was really a "gentlewoman," in
the self-pitying and self-praising sense in which those who advertise
themselves as such use that word. She was all the social forms, all
the proprieties. She was deferentially autocratic; her voice was
monotonously dignified and cultured; and she was tired, which she had a
right to be, for she had been in this business of being a gentlewomanly
hired aunt to raw young girls for over a quarter of a Century.

To the tired but practical eye of Miss Grierson, here was certainly a
young woman who needed a lot of working over to make into a lady.
And though weary and unthrillable as an old horse, Miss Grierson was
conscientious, and she was going to do her best.

Maggie made a swift survey of her new home. The rooms were just ordinary
hotel rooms, furnished with the dingy, wholesale pretentiousness of
hotels of the second rate. But they were the essence of luxury compared
to her one room at the Duchess's with its