ed.

"Thank you, I have had my dinner," said Peter. But she seized his
arm and hurried him down a side street, willy-nilly. "Seen a cop out
of the tail of my eye," she explained, hurriedly. "They're fierce,
some of them cops. I can't afford to be took up."

When they had turned the corner, Peter stopped, and took out his
pocket-book. With another searching glance at her, he handed her one
five, and two ten-dollar bills. Perhaps that might save her--for a
while at least. He lifted his hat, bowed, and had started to walk
away, when she ran after him and clutched him by the arm.

"Take back that fiver," said she, "an' come and eat with me. If you
got a heart, come an' eat with me. I know a little place we can get
somethin' decent: it's a dago caffay, but it's clean an' decent
enough. Will you come?" Her voice was shaking; he could see her
little body trembling.

"But why?" he asked, hesitatingly.

"Not for no reason, except I--I got to make myself believe you're
real!" She said it with a gasp.

Peter fell in beside her and she led the way. The small restaurant
to which she piloted him wasn't pretentious, but it was, as she had
said, clean, and the food was excellent.

She said her name was Gracie Cantrell, and Peter took her word for
it. While she was eating she discoursed about herself, pleased at
the interest this odd, dark-faced young fellow with the soft,
drawling voice seemed to take in her. She had begun in a box
factory, she told him. And then she'd been a candy-dipper. Now, you
work in a lowered atmosphere in order not to spoil your chocolate.
For which reason candy-dippers, like all the good, are likely to die
young. Seven of the girls in Gracie's department "got the T.B." That
made Gracie pause to think, and the more she thought about it, the
clearer it seemed to her that if one has to have a short life, one
might at least make a bid for a merrier one than candy-dipping. So
she made her choice. The short life and merry, rather than the T.B.
and charity.

"And has it been so merry, Gracie?" asked Peter, looking at the hard
young face wonderingly.

"Well, it's been heaps better than choc'late-dippin'," said Gracie,
promptly. "I don't get no worse treated, when all's said an' done.
I've got better clothes an' more time an' I don't work nothin' like
so hard. An' I got chanst to see things. You don't see nothin' in
the fact'ry. Say I feel like goin' to the movies, or treatin' myself
to a ice-cream soda or