irl had shaken off her hand
and sped away as swiftly as she had come. "That's seven since yesterday,
and I wish it were seven hundred. It's time somebody turned watchdog."

"That ain't your business. That's a matter for the law," said the big
policeman, who had glanced anxiously up to the second-story window and
then looked reassured and serene, as the stout gentleman made a
significant movement, which indicated that bribery was as possible for
one sex as for the other. "The law'll straighten out anything that
you've a mind to have it."

"The law! Lord help them that think the law is going to see them
through," the small woman said, with a fierceness that made the big
policeman start and lay his hand on his club. "What's the law worth when
it can't give to you one dollar of two hundred and eight that's owed;
and she that earned them gasping her life out with consumption? If it
was my account alone do you suppose I'd care? Mine's eighty-five, and I
went to law for it, to find she'd as long a head as she has smooth
tongue, and had fixed things so that there wasn't a stick of furniture
nor a dollar of property that could be levied on. If she'd been a man
the new law that gives a cheating employer fifteen days' imprisonment
might have worked with her as it's worked with many a rascal that never
knew he could be brought up with a round turn. But she's a woman and she
slides through, and a judgment against her isn't worth the paper it's
written on. So as I can't take it out in money I take it out in being
even with her. There are the papers that show I don't lie, and here I
sit the time I've fixed to sit, and if she gets the three new hands
she's after, it won't be because I haven't done what came to me to do to
hinder it."

The policeman had moved away before the words ended, the stout gentleman
having descended the steps for a moment, and stood in a position which
rendered his little transaction feasible and almost invisible. He
beckoned to me as the small woman sat down again on the steps, and I
followed him into the vestibule.

"You're interested, my dear madam," he said. "You're interested, and you
ought to be. I've stayed home from business to make sure she wasn't
interfered with, and I'd do it again with the greatest pleasure. I'd
like to post one like her before every establishment in New York where
cheating goes on, and I'm going to see this thing through!"

There was no time for questions. My appointment must b