ed to qualify as doctors or dentists, and led
the way to the second floor back.

"Eight dollars?" said Miss Leeson. "Dear me! I'm not Hetty if I do look
green. I'm just a poor little working girl. Show me something higher and
lower."

Mr. Skidder jumped and strewed the floor with cigarette stubs at the rap
on his door.

"Excuse me, Mr. Skidder," said Mrs. Parker, with her demon's smile at
his pale looks. "I didn't know you were in. I asked the lady to have a
look at your lambrequins."

"They're too lovely for anything," said Miss Leeson, smiling in exactly
the way the angels do.

After they had gone Mr. Skidder got very busy erasing the tall,
black-haired heroine from his latest (unproduced) play and inserting a
small, roguish one with heavy, bright hair and vivacious features.

"Anna Held'll jump at it," said Mr. Skidder to himself, putting his feet
up against the lambrequins and disappearing in a cloud of smoke like an
aerial cuttlefish.

Presently the tocsin call of "Clara!" sounded to the world the state
of Miss Leeson's purse. A dark goblin seized her, mounted a Stygian
stairway, thrust her into a vault with a glimmer of light in its top
and muttered the menacing and cabalistic words "Two dollars!"

"I'll take it!" sighed Miss Leeson, sinking down upon the squeaky iron
bed.

Every day Miss Leeson went out to work. At night she brought home papers
with handwriting on them and made copies with her typewriter. Sometimes
she had no work at night, and then she would sit on the steps of the
high stoop with the other roomers. Miss Leeson was not intended for
a sky-light room when the plans were drawn for her creation. She was
gay-hearted and full of tender, whimsical fancies. Once she let Mr.
Skidder read to her three acts of his great (unpublished) comedy, "It's
No Kid; or, The Heir of the Subway."

There was rejoicing among the gentlemen roomers whenever Miss Leeson had
time to sit on the steps for an hour or two. But Miss Longnecker, the
tall blonde who taught in a public school and said, "Well, really!" to
everything you said, sat on the top step and sniffed. And Miss Dorn,
who shot at the moving ducks at Coney every Sunday and worked in a
department store, sat on the bottom step and sniffed. Miss Leeson sat
on the middle step and the men would quickly group around her.

Especially Mr. Skidder, who had cast her in his mind for the star part
in a private, romantic (unspoken) drama in real life. And especi