much per week are in his hands.
This particular buyer was a capable, cool-eyed, impersonal, young, bald-headed man. As he
walked along the aisles of his department lie seemed to be sailing on a sea of frangipanni,
while white clouds, machine-embroidered, floated around him. Too many sweets bring
surfeit. He looked upon Hetty Pepper's homely countenance, emerald eyes, and chocolate-
colored hair as a welcome oasis of green in a desert of cloying beauty. In a quiet angle of a
counter he pinched her arm kindly, three inches above the elbow. She slapped him three
feet away with one good blow of her muscular and not especially lily- white right. So, now
you know why Hetty Pepper came to leave the Biggest Store at thirty minutes' notice, with
one dime and a nickel in her purse.
This morning's quotations list the price of rib beef at six cents per (butcher's) pound. But on
the day that Hetty was "released" by the B. S. the price was seven and one-half cents. That
fact is what makes this story possible. Otherwise, the extra four cents would have--
But the plot of nearly all the good stories in the world is concerned with shorts who were
unable to cover; so you can find no fault with this one.
Hetty mounted with her rib beef to her $3.50 third-floor back. One hot, savory beef-stew for
supper, a night's good sleep, and she would be fit in the morning to apply again for the tasks
of Hercules, Joan of Arc, Una, Job, and Little-Red-Riding-Hood.
In her room she got the granite-ware stew-pan out of the 2x4-foot china--er--I mean
earthenware closet, and began to dig down in a rats'-nest of paper bags for the potatoes and
onions. She came out with her nose and chin just a little sharper pointed.
There was neither a potato nor an onion. Now, what kind of a beef- Stew can you make out
of simply beef? You can make oyster-soup without oysters, turtle-soup without turtles,
coffee-cake without coffee, but you can't make beef-stew without potatoes and onions.
But rib beef alone, in an emergency, can make an ordinary pine door look like a wrought-
iron gambling-house portal to the wolf. With salt and pepper and a tablespoonful of flour
(first well stirred in a little cold water) 'twill serve--'tis not so deep as a lobster a la Newburg
nor so wide as a church festival doughnut; but 'twill serve.
Hetty took her stew-pan to the rear of the third-floor hall. According to the advertisements
of the Vallambrosa there was running water to be found there. Between you and me and the
water-meter, it only ambled or walked through the faucets; but technicalities have no place
here. There was also a sink where housekeeping roomers often met to dump their coffee
grounds and glare at one another's kimonos.
At this sink Hetty found a girl with heavy, gold-brown, artistic hair and plaintive eyes,
washing two large "Irish" potatoes. Hetty knew the Vallambrosa as well as any one not
owning "double hextra- magnifying eyes" could compass its mysteries. The kimonos were
her encyclopedia, her "Who's What?" her clearinghouse of news, of goers and comers.
From a rose-pink kimono edged with Nile green she had learned that the girl with the
potatoes was a miniature-painter living in a kind of attic--or "studio," as they prefer to call
it--on the top floor. Hetty was not certain in her mind what a miniature was; but it certainly