s bare toes, as he
approached the nearest ticket booth.

Behind the wicket sat a young woman of much self-possession. By all the
outward signs she was a born and bred metropolitan and therefore one
steeled against surprise and armed mentally against trick and device.
Even before she spoke you felt sure she would say _oily_ if she meant
_early_, and _early_ if she meant _oily_--sure linguistic marks of the
native-born New York cockney.

To match the environment of her employment she wore a costume that was
fondly presumed to be the correct garbing of a Sicilian peasant maid,
including a brilliant bodice that laced in front and buttoned behind, an
imposing headdress, and on both her arms, bracelets of the better known
semi-precious metals.

Coming boldly up to her, the ragged man laid upon the shelf of the
wicket his precious bill--it was now wadded into a greenish-yellow wisp
like a sprig of celery top--and said simply, "One!"

With a jangle of her wrist jewelry, the young woman drew the bill in
under the bars and straightened it out in front of her. She considered,
with widening gaze, the numeral 1 and the three naughts following it.
Then through the bars she considered carefully him who had brought it.
From one to the other and back again she looked.

"Woit one minute," she said. It is impossible to reproduce in cold type
the manner in which this young woman uttered the word _minute_. But
there was an "o" in it and a labial hint of an extra "u."

"Woit, please," she said again, and holding the bill down flat with one
hand she turned and beckoned to some one at her left.

A pace behind the panhandler, Judson Green watched. Now the big comedy
scene was coming, just as it always came in the books. Either the
tattered possessor of the one-thousand-dollar bill would be made welcome
by a gratified proprietor and would be given the liberty of the entire
island and would have columns written about him by a hundred gratified
press-agents, or else there would be a call for the police and for the
first time in the history of New York a man would be locked up, not for
the common crime of having no money, but for having too much money.

Obedient to the young woman's request, the panhandler waited. At her
beck there came a stout person in a green coat and red trousers--Italian
soldiers wear these colours, or at least they often do at Coney
Island--and behind her free hand the young woman whispered in his ear.
He nodded unde