s
always are. Tillie's thin hair was wadded back into a moist knob at the
back and skewered with a gray-black hairpin. From her parboiled,
shriveled fingers to her ruddy, perspiring face there was nothing of
grace or beauty about Tillie. And yet Heiny found something pleasing
there. He could not have told you why, so how can I, unless to say that
it was, perhaps, for much the same reason that we rejoice in the
wholesome, safe, reassuring feel of the gray woolen blanket on our bed
when we wake from a horrid dream.

"A Happy New Year to you," said Heiny gravely, and took his hand out of
his pocket.

Tillie's moist right hand closed over something. She smiled so that one
saw all her broken black teeth.

"The same t' you," said Tillie. "The same t' you."

VI

ONE OF THE OLD GIRLS

All of those ladies who end their conversation with you by wearily
suggesting that you go down to the basement to find what you seek, do not
receive a meager seven dollars a week as a reward for their efforts.
Neither are they all obliged to climb five weary flights of stairs to
reach the dismal little court room which is their home, and there are
several who need not walk thirty-three blocks to save carfare, only to
spend wretched evenings washing out handkerchiefs and stockings in the
cracked little washbowl, while one ear is cocked for the stealthy tread
of the Lady Who Objects.

The earnest compiler of working girls' budgets would pass Effie Bauer
hurriedly by. Effie's budget bulged here and there with such pathetic
items as hand-embroidered blouses, thick club steaks, and parquet tickets
for Maude Adams. That you may visualize her at once I may say that Effie
looked twenty-four--from the rear (all women do in these days of girlish
simplicity in hats and tailor-mades); her skirts never sagged, her
shirtwaists were marvels of plainness and fit, and her switch had cost
her sixteen dollars, wholesale (a lady friend in the business). Oh,
there was nothing tragic about Effie. She had a plump, assured style, a
keen blue eye, a gift of repartee, and a way of doing her hair so that
the gray at the sides scarcely showed at all. Also a knowledge of
corsets that had placed her at the buying end of that important
department at Spiegel's. Effie knew to the minute when coral beads went
out and pearl beads came in, and just by looking at her blouses you could
tell when Cluny died and Irish was born. Meeting Effie on the street,
y