ou can keep it up?" said he. "Hm?" Had he been less worn and
weary, and apparently even starved, his laugh and question would have
evoked a sharper response. As it was, the woman replied with the
utmost good-nature.

"Any old time," said she. "Lord! I ain't setting up for a kid. I
ain't fool enough to put on short skirts and pigtails, but I am
setting up for a young lady, and I can keep it up, anyhow. Lord! I
ain't so very old, anyhow. If I didn't look the way I do now, I
couldn't get a position, because they'd put me down for a
back-number; but I had something left for that beauty-doctor to work
on." Then she gazed critically at the two men. "It wouldn't take much
to make you into a regular dude," said she to Carroll. "You are
dressed to beat the band as it is. Say!" She gave him a confidential
wink.

"Well?" said Carroll.

"You are dressed most too well. It's all very well to look stylish,
to look as if you had been earning twenty-five hundred a year, but,
Lord! you look as if you had been getting ten! The bosses might be a
little afraid of you. They might say they didn't see how a man could
have dressed like you do, unless he had helped himself to some of the
firm's cash. See? I don't mean any offence. You look to me like a
real gentleman."

"Thank you," replied Carroll.

"If I was you I'd put on a pair of pants not quite so nicely creased,
and I'd sell that overcoat and get a good-style ready-made one. Your
chances would be a heap better--honest."

"Thank you," said Carroll, again. He was conscious of amusement and a
curious sense of a mental tonic from this loud-voiced, eagerly
helpful female.

"I'm right, you bet," said she. "But otherwise it wouldn't take much.
You go and have a little something put on your hair, and have your
face massaged a little, and if I was you I'd buy a red tie. You can
get a dandy red tie at Steele & Esterbrook's for a quarter. That one
you have on makes you look kinder pale. Then a red tie is younger.
Say, I'll tell you, if you would only have your mustache trimmed, and
wax the ends, it would make no end of difference."

"What are you going to do when you are asked how old you are? Lie?"
inquired the other man, in his bitter, sardonic voice.

This time the woman regarded him with slight indignation. "Say," said
she, "you'll never get a place if you don't act pleasanter. Places
ain't to be got that way, I can tell you. You've got to act as if
you'd eat nothin' but butter an'