a! She had been talking to Topsy, Fannie's helper. Her
envelope had slipped out of her waist, and when she went to pick it
up, lo! there was nothing there to pick--fourteen dollars gone! There
was excitement for you. Fourteen dollars in Wing 13, Room 3, was equal
to fourteen million dollars in Wall Street. Everybody pulled out
boxes and searched, got down on hands and knees and poked, and the
rest mauled Louisa from head to foot.

"Sure it ain't in your stocking? Well, look _again_."

"What's this?"--jabbing Louisa's ribs--"this?"

Eight hands going over Louisa's person as if the anguished slip of a
girl could not have felt that stiff envelope with fourteen dollars in
it herself had it been there. She stood helpless, woebegone.

Ida rose Napoleon-like to the rescue. "I'll search everybody in the
room!"

Whereat she made a grab at Topsy and removed her. "They" say Topsy was
stripped to the breezes in Ida's fury, but no envelope.

Topsy, be it known, was already a suspicious character. That very week
Fannie's purse had disappeared under circumstances pointing to Topsy.
Which caused a strained relationship between the two. One day it
broke--such relationship as existed.

Fannie up at her end of the boxes was heard to screech down the line
to where Topsy was sorting chocolate rolls:

"How dare you talk to me like that?"

"I ain't talkin' to you!"

"You am. You called me names."

"I never. I called you nothin', you ole white nigger."

"You stand lie to me like that and call me names?"

"Who say lie? I ain't no liar. You shut up; you ain't my boss. I'll
call you anythin' I please, sassin' me that way!"

"I didn't sassed you. You called me names."

"I don't care what I called you--I know what you _is_." Here Topsy
gathered all her strength and shouted up to Fannie, "You're a
_heifer_, you is."

Now there is much I do not know about the world, and maybe heifer is a
word like some one or two others you are never supposed to set down in
so many letters. If so, it is new to me and I apologize. The way Topsy
called it, and the way Fannie acted on hearing herself called it,
would lead one to believe it is a word never appearing in print.

"You--call--me a _heifer_?" shrieked Fannie. "I'll tell ya landlady on
ya, I will!"

"Don' yo' go mixin' up in my private affairs. You shut yo' mouth, yo'
hear me? yo' _heifer_!"

"I _ain't_ no heifer!"

Fortunately Ida swung into our midst about then and saved folk from