f which,
as I passed down the stairs, came the same odor of burning fat and the
rank steam of long-boiled coffee or tea. My errand had been to find the
address of a little shop-girl, a niece of Norah's, a child who had been
educated at one of the ward schools, and whom no power could induce to
take a place as waitress or chambermaid. To stand twelve or fourteen
hours behind the counter of a Grand street store met her ideas of
gentility and of personal freedom far better than yielding to the
requirements of a mistress; and the six dollars a week went in cheap
finery till the hard times forced her to make it part of the family
fund. Then sore trouble came. The father had died, the mother was in
hospital, from which she was never likely to come out, and Katy, thrown
utterly on her own resources, had found her six dollars all inadequate
to the demands her habits made, and, frightened and perplexed, went
from one cheap boarding-house to another, four or five girls clubbing
together to pay for the wretched room they called home, and still
striving to keep up the appearance necessary for their position. Cheap
jewelry, banged hair and a dress modelled after the latest extremity of
fashion were the ambition of each and all, but neither jewelry nor
puffs and ruffles had been sufficient to keep off the attack of
pneumonia through which these same girls had nursed her, sitting up
turn by turn at night, and taking her duty by day that the place might
still be kept open for her.

Katy's cheeks were flushed and an ominous cough still lingered, but she
spoke cheerfully: "It's my last day in: I can go to-morrow. It's the
beef-tea has done it, I do believe. Did you know Maria brought it to me
every day? I don't know what I'll do without it."

"Learn to make it yourself, Katy."

"Me?" and Katy laughed incredulously. "When would I get time? and what
would I make it on? We don't have a fire but Sundays, and only a show
of one then. And I don't want it, either: I ain't used to it."

"What do you live on, Katy?"

"Why, we did have breakfast and tea here--coffee and meat for
breakfast, and bread and butter and tea for supper. I get a cream-cake
or some drop-cakes for dinner, but for a good while I've just paid a
dollar a week for my share of the room, and bought something for
breakfast--'most always a pie. You can get a splendid pie for five
cents, and a pretty good one for three; and it's plenty too. That's the
way the girls in the bag-