re anything the
matter with the dress, yet?"

"No, Miss Sadie. I was downtown and thought I would ask you to go to
dinner with me. I went with you yesterday."

"O-oo my! I don't know," said Sadie, shaking her head. "I bet you'd like
to come home with me instead--no?"

"I would like to. But it would not be right for me to accept your
hospitality and never return it," said Helen.

"Chee! you must 'a' had a legacy," laughed Sadie.

"I--I have a little more money than I had yesterday," admitted Helen,
which was true, for she had taken some out of the wallet in the trunk
before she left her uncle's house.

"Well, when you swells feel like spendin' there ain't no stoppin' youse, I
suppose," declared Sadie. "Do you wanter fly real high?"

"I guess we can afford a real nice dinner," said Helen, smiling.

"Are you good for as high as thirty-fi' cents apiece?" demanded Sadie.

"Yes."

"Chee! Then I can take you to a stylish place where we can get a swell
feed at noon, for that. It's up on Grand Street. All the buyers and
department store heads go there with the wholesale salesmen for lunch.
Wait till I git me hat!" and away Sadie shot, up the tenement house
stairs, so fast that her little feet, bound by the tight skirt she wore,
seemed fairly to twinkle.

Helen had but a few moments to wait on the sidewalk; yet within that short
time something happened to change the entire current of the day's
adventures. She heard some boys shouting from the direction of the Bowery;
there was a crowd crossing the street diagonally; she watched it with some
apprehension at first, for it came right along the sidewalk toward her.

"Hi, fellers! See de Lurcher! Here comes de Lurcher!" yelled one ribald
youth, who leaped on the stoop to which Helen had retreated the better to
see over the heads of the crowd at the person who was the core of it.

And then Helen, in no little amazement, saw that this individual was none
other than the man whom she had seen driven out of Fenwick Grimes's
office. A gang of hoodlums surrounded him. They jeered at him, tore at his
ragged clothes, hooted, and otherwise nagged the poor old fellow.

At every halt he made they pressed closer upon the "Lurcher." It was easy
to see why he had been given that name. He was probably an old inhabitant
of the neighborhood, and his lurching from side to side of the walk had
suggested the nickname to some local wit.

Just as he steered for the rail of the step on which