indicates the attitude of eagerness with which she received the
proposition.

"Yas'm, I kin sholy git dat much money together in th'ee weeks de way
I's a-wo'kin'."

"Well, now, Polly, be sure; for if you are not prompt I shall have to
dispose of it where it was first promised," was the admonition.

"Oh, you kin 'pend on me, Mis' Mo'ton; fu' when I sets out to save
money I kin save, I tell you." Polly was not usually so sanguine, but
what changes will not the notion of the possession of a brown silk
dress trimmed with passementrie make in the disposition of a woman?

Polly let Sam into the secret, and, be it said to his credit, he
entered into the plan with an enthusiasm no less intense than her own.
He had always wanted to see her in a silk dress, he told her, and then
in a quizzically injured tone of voice, "but you ought to waited tell
I ketched dem policy sha'ks an' I'd 'a' got you a new one." He even
went so far as to go to work for a week and bring Polly his earnings,
of course, after certain "little debts" which he mentioned but did not
specify, had been deducted.

But in spite of all this, when washing isn't bringing an especially
good price; when one must eat and food is high; when a grasping
landlord comes around once every week and exacts tribute for the
privilege of breathing foul air from an alley in a room up four
flights; when, I say, all this is true, and it generally is true in
the New York tenderloin, seven whole dollars are not easily saved.
There was much raking and scraping and pinching during each day that
at night Polly might add a few nickels or pennies to the store that
jingled in a blue jug in one corner of her closet. She called it her
bank, and Sam had laughed at the conceit, telling her that that was
one bank anyhow that couldn't "bust."

As the days went on how she counted her savings and exulted in their
growth! She already saw herself decked out in her new gown, the envy
and admiration of every woman in the neighborhood. She even began to
wish that she had a full-length glass in order that she might get the
complete effect of her own magnificence. So saving, hoping, dreaming,
the time went on until a few days before the limit, and there was only
about a dollar to be added to make the required amount. This she could
do easily in the remaining time. So Polly was jubilant.

Now everything would have been all right and matters would have ended
happily if Sam had only kept on at work.