"what good are you?"

"No good," said Daisy gently.

That night she hugged her old doll to her breast and wept bitterly, but
very quietly, so as not to waken her brothers. The next morning, very
early, she made a parcel of her belongings, and carried it with her to
the restaurant. The glass door with its dingy gilt lettering was being
unlocked for the day by Mr. Linnevitch. He was surprised to see her a
full half-hour before opening time.

"Mr. Linnevitch," said Daisy, "things are so that I can't stay at home
any more. I will send them the money, but I have to find another place
to live."

"We got a little room," he said; "you can have if Mrs. Linnevitch says
so. I was going to give you more pay. We give you that room
instead--eh?"

Mrs. Linnevitch gave her consent. She was a dreary, weary woman of
American birth. When she was alone with her husband she never upbraided
him for his infidelities, or referred to them. But later, on this
particular day, having a chance to speak, she said:

"I hope you ain't going to bother this one, Linne?"

He patted his wife's bony back and shook his head. "The better as I know
that girl, Minnie," he said, "the sorrier I am for what I used to be
doing sometimes. You and her is going to have a square deal."

"I bin up to put her room straight," said Mrs. Linnevitch. "She's got a
doll."

She delivered this for what it was worth, in an uninterested,
emotionless voice.

"I tell you what she ought to have got," said her husband. "She ought to
have got now a good husband, and some live dolls--eh?"

IV

New customers were not uncommon in the restaurant, but the young man who
dropped in for noon dinner upon the following Friday was of a plumage
gayer than any to which the waitresses and habitues of the place were
accustomed. To Daisy, sitting at her high cashier's desk, like a young
queen enthroned, he seemed to have something of the nature of a prince
from a far country. She watched him eat. She saw in his cuffs the glint
of gold; she noted with what elegance he held his little fingers aloof
from his hands. She noted the polish and cleanliness of his nails, the
shortness of his recent hair-cut, the great breadth of his shoulders
(they were his coat's shoulders, but she did not know this), the
narrowness of his waist, the interesting pallor of his face.

Not until the restaurant was well filled did any one have the audacity
to sit at the stranger's table. His elegance and refin