r mental
woe. In his hand he bore an onion--a pink, smooth, solid, shining
onion as large around as a ninety-eight-cent alarm-clock.

Hetty stopped. So did the young man. There was something
Joan of Arc-ish, Herculean, and Una-ish in the look and pose
of the shop-lady--she had cast off the roles of Job and
Little-Red-Riding-Hood. The young man stopped at the foot of the
stairs and coughed distractedly. He felt marooned, held up, attacked,
assailed, levied upon, sacked, assessed, panhandled, browbeaten,
though he knew not why. It was the look in Hetty's eyes that did it.
In them he saw the Jolly Roger fly to the masthead and an able seaman
with a dirk between his teeth scurry up the ratlines and nail it
there. But as yet he did not know that the cargo he carried was the
thing that had caused him to be so nearly blown out of the water
without even a parley.

"_Beg_ your pardon," said Hetty, as sweetly as her dilute acetic acid
tones permitted, "but did you find that onion on the stairs? There was
a hole in the paper bag; and I've just come out to look for it."

The young man coughed for half a minute. The interval may have given
him the courage to defend his own property. Also, he clutched his
pungent prize greedily, and, with a show of spirit, faced his grim
waylayer.

"No," he said huskily, "I didn't find it on the stairs. It was given
to me by Jack Bevens, on the top floor. If you don't believe it, ask
him. I'll wait until you do."

"I know about Bevens," said Hetty, sourly. "He writes books and things
up there for the paper-and-rags man. We can hear the postman guy him
all over the house when he brings them thick envelopes back. Say--do
you live in the Vallambrosa?"

"I do not," said the young man. "I come to see Bevens sometimes. He's
my friend. I live two blocks west."

"What are you going to do with the onion?--_begging_ your pardon,"
said Hetty.

"I'm going to eat it."

"Raw?"

"Yes: as soon as I get home."

"Haven't you got anything else to eat with it?"

The young man considered briefly.

"No," he confessed; "there's not another scrap of anything in my
diggings to eat. I think old Jack is pretty hard up for grub in his
shack, too. He hated to give up the onion, but I worried him into
parting with it."

"Man," said Hetty, fixing him with her world-sapient eyes, and laying
a bony but impressive finger on his sleeve, "you've known trouble, too,
haven't you?"

"Lots," said the onion owner, pro