ifteen or twenty-five cents
was charged elsewhere for no better cream, but a more decorative saucer.

But, good gracious! what a sum of money--ten cents for a mere pleasure!
though the memory of it afterward was a comfort for several days, and
then, oh, unfortunate girl! the sick longing would come again! And so, in
a sort of despair, I tried to save thirty cents, with the deliberate
intention of spending the whole sum on luxury and folly. Six long,
blazing-hot, idle weeks I should have to pass in the "torture-chamber,"
but with that thirty cents by me I could, every two weeks, loiter
deliciously over a plate of cream, feel its velvety smoothness on my lips
and its icy coldness cooling all my weary, heat-worn body. One week I
could live on memory, and the next upon anticipation, and so get through
the long vacation in comparative comfort.

There was no lock upon my room door, but I said nothing about it, as the
door would not close anyway; and at night, for security, I placed the
lignum-vitae chair against it. In the day-time I had to entrust my
belongings to the honor of my house-mates, as it were.

The six little piles of wash-money I had, after the manner of a squirrel,
buried here and there at the bottom of my trunk, which I securely locked;
but my precious thirty cents I carried about with me, tied in the corner
of a handkerchief. It generally rested in the bosom of my dress, but
there came a day when, for economy's sake, I washed a pair of stockings
as well as my three handkerchiefs, and Mrs. Miller said I might hang them
on the line in the yard below. My tiny window opened in that direction.
The day was fiercely hot. I put the money in my pocket and carefully hung
my dress up opposite the window, and, in a little white jacket, did out
my washing; then, singing happily, I ran down-stairs, two long flights,
to hang the articles on the line. As I was putting a clothes-pin in place
I glanced upward at the musk-plant on my window-sill--and then my heart
stood still in my breast. I could neither breathe nor move for the
moment. I could see my dress-skirt depending from its nail, and oh, dear
God! a man's great red hand was grasping it--was clutching it, here and
there, in search of the pocket! Suddenly I gave a piercing cry, and
bounding into the house, I tore madly up the stairs--too late. The dress
lay in the doorway--the pocket was empty! On the floor, with my head
against the white-washed wall, I sat with closed e