o receive instructions and literature concerning her wares. Samples
were to be sent to her at Atlanta.

"Now, having given my address as 126 East Centre, I must hurry over
there and apply for board," said Josie to herself as she left the
hotel.

The group gathered on the porch at 126 East Centre was the same as it
had been on the day that Josie had tracked the elusive Dink to her
lair. The young men were tilted back in their chairs at the same angle,
and the young women were equally taken up with their ear puffs and
frizzes. The clientele of 126 was an ever-changing one, but the class
characteristics were stationary.

Josie tripped up the steps, assuming a kind of nonchalance as she
calmly viewed the loafing boarders. They in turn gazed at her, some
with interest and some with open disdain. With the boarders at 126 one
must prove herself down to their standards before being accepted into
their social order.

"Stuck up!" declared one young woman--the one with the most extreme ear
puffs of all, the shortest skirt and the highest heels.

"Oh, I don't know," objected a man, removing the toothpick from his
mouth and his gaudily socked feet from the railing. "I think she's some
cutey."

A snicker of derision answered this sally.

"With them unstylish low heels? I guess you ain't got below her henna
bob," snapped the girl, arching her instep and poking out her near-silk
clad foot with its high-heeled, dirty, white kid pump.

Josie pulled the bell. It was the old-fashioned kind that must be
pulled not pushed. When it was in working order a pull would set a wire
in motion through the length of the house to the back entry and there a
bell attached to the wire would start such a jangling that someone
would come to the front door. This happened when the bell was in order,
which was seldom the case at 126. When Josie gave a tug, which was
vigorous and somewhat vicious from the embarrassment she could but feel
at the overheard remarks, the bell handle with a coil of broken wire
spring came limply away, and it was nothing but Josie's training that
kept her ever on the alert that saved her from falling backwards.

"April fool!" called a grinning youth from the porch.

Josie laughed good-naturedly at her prospective fellow-boarder.

"Anyhow I know how not to get in," she said.

"'Tain't any trouble to get in this joint," ventured a woman. "There's
more goin' than comin'. I'll never send a dog here."

"Oh, 'tain't so bad