s store.' That's about how innocent and beautiful
she is. You know those little Long Island water-front villages like
Greenburg--a couple of duck-farms for sport, and clams and about nine
summer visitors for industries. That's the kind of a place she comes
from. But, say--you ought to see her!

"What could I do? I don't know what money looks like in the morning.
And she'd paid her last cent of pocket-money for her railroad ticket
except a quarter, which she had squandered on gum-drops. She was
eating them out of a paper bag. I took her to a boarding-house on
Thirty-second Street where I used to live, and hocked her. She's in
soak for a dollar. That's old Mother McGinnis' price per day. I'll
show you the house."

"What words are these, Tripp?" said I. "I thought you said you had a
story. Every ferryboat that crosses the East River brings or takes
away girls from Long Island."

The premature lines on Tripp's face grew deeper. He frowned seriously
from his tangle of hair. He separated his hands and emphasized his
answer with one shaking forefinger.

"Can't you see," he said, "what a rattling fine story it would make?
You could do it fine. All about the romance, you know, and describe
the girl, and put a lot of stuff in it about true love, and sling
in a few stickfuls of funny business--joshing the Long Islanders
about being green, and, well--you know how to do it. You ought to
get fifteen dollars out of it, anyhow. And it'll cost you only about
four dollars. You'll make a clear profit of eleven."

"How will it cost me four dollars?" I asked, suspiciously.

"One dollar to Mrs. McGinnis," Tripp answered, promptly, "and two
dollars to pay the girl's fare back home."

"And the fourth dimension?" I inquired, making a rapid mental
calculation.

"One dollar to me," said Tripp. "For whiskey. Are you on?"

I smiled enigmatically and spread my elbows as if to begin writing
again. But this grim, abject, specious, subservient, burr-like wreck
of a man would not be shaken off. His forehead suddenly became
shiningly moist.

"Don't you see," he said, with a sort of desperate calmness, "that
this girl has got to be sent home to-day--not to-night nor to-morrow,
but to-day? I can't do anything for her. You know, I'm the janitor
and corresponding secretary of the Down-and-Out Club. I thought you
could make a newspaper story out of it and win out a piece of money
on general results. But, anyhow, don't you see that she's got to ge