nwhile that
the woman in the room below might be sleeping. "I'm not sick, honestly
I'm not. I'm just as much obliged, and I'm dead sorry I woke you up with
my blubbering. I started out with the soft pedal on, but things got away
from me. Can you hear me?"

"Like a phonograph. Sure you couldn't use a sip of brandy where it'd do
the most good?"

"Sure."

"Well, then, cut out the weeps and get your beauty sleep, kid. He ain't
worth sobbing over, anyway, believe me."

"He!" snorted Gertie indignantly. "You're cold. There never was
anything in peg-tops that could make me carry on like the heroine of the
Elsie series."

"Lost your job?"

"No such luck."

"Well, then, what in Sam Hill could make a woman----"

"Lonesome!" snapped Gertie. "And the floorwalker got fresh to-day. And
I found two gray hairs to-night. And I'd give my next week's pay
envelope to hear the double click that our front gate gives back home."

"Back home!" echoed the Kid Next Door in a dangerously loud voice. "Say,
I want to talk to you. If you'll promise you won't get sore and think
I'm fresh, I'll ask you a favor. Slip on a kimono and we'll sneak down
to the front stoop and talk it over. I'm as wide awake as a chorus girl
and twice as hungry. I've got two apples and a box of crackers. Are you
on?"

Gertie snickered. "It isn't done in our best sets, but I'm on. I've got
a can of sardines and an orange. I'll be ready in six minutes."

She was, too. She wiped off the cold cream and salt tears with a dry
towel, did her hair in a schoolgirl braid and tied it with a big bow, and
dressed herself in a black skirt and a baby blue dressing sacque. The
Kid Next Door was waiting outside in the hall. His gray sweater covered
a multitude of sartorial deficiencies. Gertie stared at him, and he
stared at Gertie in the sickly blue light of the boarding-house hall, and
it took her one-half of one second to discover that she liked his mouth,
and his eyes, and the way his hair was mussed.

"Why, you're only a kid!" whispered the Kid Next Door, in surprise.

Gertie smothered a laugh. "You're not the first man that's been deceived
by a pig-tail braid and a baby blue waist. I could locate those two gray
hairs for you with my eyes shut and my feet in a sack. Come on, boy.
These Robert W. Chambers situations make me nervous."

Many earnest young writers with a flow of adjectives and a passion for
detail have attempted to describe the