purposes,
imperturbable amid suffering.

Maggie always departed with raised spirits from the showing places of
the melodrama. She rejoiced at the way in which the poor and virtuous
eventually surmounted the wealthy and wicked. The theatre made her
think. She wondered if the culture and refinement she had seen
imitated, perhaps grotesquely, by the heroine on the stage, could be
acquired by a girl who lived in a tenement house and worked in a shirt
factory.

Chapter IX

A group of urchins were intent upon the side door of a saloon.
Expectancy gleamed from their eyes. They were twisting their fingers
in excitement.

"Here she comes," yelled one of them suddenly.

The group of urchins burst instantly asunder and its individual
fragments were spread in a wide, respectable half circle about the
point of interest. The saloon door opened with a crash, and the figure
of a woman appeared upon the threshold. Her grey hair fell in knotted
masses about her shoulders. Her face was crimsoned and wet with
perspiration. Her eyes had a rolling glare.

"Not a damn cent more of me money will yehs ever get, not a damn cent.
I spent me money here fer t'ree years an' now yehs tells me yeh'll sell
me no more stuff! T'hell wid yeh, Johnnie Murckre! 'Disturbance'?
Disturbance be damned! T'hell wid yeh, Johnnie--"

The door received a kick of exasperation from within and the woman
lurched heavily out on the sidewalk.

The gamins in the half-circle became violently agitated. They began to
dance about and hoot and yell and jeer. Wide dirty grins spread over
each face.

The woman made a furious dash at a particularly outrageous cluster of
little boys. They laughed delightedly and scampered off a short
distance, calling out over their shoulders to her. She stood tottering
on the curb-stone and thundered at them.

"Yeh devil's kids," she howled, shaking red fists. The little boys
whooped in glee. As she started up the street they fell in behind and
marched uproariously. Occasionally she wheeled about and made charges
on them. They ran nimbly out of reach and taunted her.

In the frame of a gruesome doorway she stood for a moment cursing them.
Her hair straggled, giving her crimson features a look of insanity.
Her great fists quivered as she shook them madly in the air.

The urchins made terrific noises until she turned and disappeared.
Then they filed quietly in the way they had come.

The woman floundered abo