ught
her. But she sold the papers and she purchased the booze.

Her mother did not know where she spent this extra time. She did not
care since the money came in from Maverick's steadily each week.
Neither did the lodger care how the booze was procured; the big thing
to him was that it came.

At first these lessons were fun for him; the big, gawky, half-starved,
overworked child seeing so vividly in pictures all that he told her in
words. Full-fed on the scraps from Maverick's--he was no longer
fastidious--well stimulated by the drink she brought, he took an ugly
sort of degraded pleasure in posturing before her, acting as he alone
could act those most wonderful of all plays, watching with hateful,
sardonic amusement the light and shadow of emotion upon her dirty
face. Oh, he was a magician, no doubt at all of that! Past master in
the rare art of a true genius, that of producing illusion.

Then he would make Cake try, rave at her, curse her, strike her, kill
himself laughing, drink some more and put her at it again.

Night after night, almost comatose from the fatigue of a day that
began while it was still dark, she carried a heaped-up plate and a
full bottle to the lodger's room and sat down upon the dry-goods box
with the candle beside her on the floor. And, having thus secured her
welcome, night after night she walked with him among that greatest of
all throngs of soldiers and lovers, kings and cardinals, queens,
prostitutes and thieves.

If the liquor was short in the bottle a dime's worth, the lesson was
curtailed. At first Cake tried to coax him. "Aw, c'mon, yuh Romeo on
th' street in Mantua."

But the lodger was never so drunk that he made the slightest
concession.

"Yes, I'm Romeo all right--the lad's there, never fear, gutter-snipe.
But--the bottle is not full."

After that she never attempted to change his ruling. She was letter
perfect in the bitter lesson, and if the sale of papers did not bring
in enough to fill the bottle, she accepted the hard fact with the calm
of great determination and did not go near the lodger's room, but went
to bed instead.

Perhaps it was these rare occasions of rest that kept her alive.

After the lodger had been teaching her for several years her mother
died and was buried in the potters' field. Cake managed to keep two
rooms of the wretched flat, and no word of his landlady's demise
reached the lodger's drink-dulled ears. Otherwise Cake feared he might
depart, tak