a cost of sixty cents
for the week; dinners were $1.05. The evening papers--show me a New
Yorker going without his daily paper!--came to six cents; and two
Sunday papers--one for the personal column and the other to read--were
ten cents. The total amounts to $4.76. Now, one has to buy clothes,
and--

I give it up. I hear of wonderful bargains in fabrics, and of miracles
performed with needle and thread; but I am in doubt. I hold my pen
poised in vain when I would add to Dulcie's life some of those joys
that belong to woman by virtue of all the unwritten, sacred, natural,
inactive ordinances of the equity of heaven. Twice she had been to Coney
Island and had ridden the hobby-horses. 'Tis a weary thing to count your
pleasures by summers instead of by hours.

Piggy needs but a word. When the girls named him, an undeserving stigma
was cast upon the noble family of swine. The words-of-three-letters
lesson in the old blue spelling book begins with Piggy's biography.
He was fat; he had the soul of a rat, the habits of a bat, and the
magnanimity of a cat. . . He wore expensive clothes; and was a
connoisseur in starvation. He could look at a shop-girl and tell you
to an hour how long it had been since she had eaten anything more
nourishing than marshmallows and tea. He hung about the shopping
districts, and prowled around in department stores with his invitations
to dinner. Men who escort dogs upon the streets at the end of a string
look down upon him. He is a type; I can dwell upon him no longer; my
pen is not the kind intended for him; I am no carpenter.

At ten minutes to seven Dulcie was ready. She looked at herself in the
wrinkly mirror. The reflection was satisfactory. The dark blue dress,
fitting without a wrinkle, the hat with its jaunty black feather, the
but-slightly-soiled gloves--all representing self-denial, even of food
itself--were vastly becoming.

Dulcie forgot everything else for a moment except that she was
beautiful, and that life was about to lift a corner of its mysterious
veil for her to observe its wonders. No gentleman had ever asked her
out before. Now she was going for a brief moment into the glitter and
exalted show.

The girls said that Piggy was a "spender." There would be a grand
dinner, and music, and splendidly dressed ladies to look at, and things
to eat that strangely twisted the girls' jaws when they tried to tell
about them. No doubt she would be asked out again. There was a blue
ponge