you, Sadie!"

"Aw, chee! That ain't nothin'," objected the East Side girl. "We poor
folks has gotter help each other."

So Helen would not spoil the little sacrifice by acknowledging to more
money, and they climbed the stairs again to the Goronsky tenement. The
girl from Sunset Ranch was glad--oh, so glad!--of this incident. Chilled
as she had been by the selfishness in her uncle's Madison Avenue mansion,
she was glad to have her heart warmed down here among the poor of Madison
Street.

CHAPTER XX

OUT OF STEP WITH THE TIMES

"No," Sadie told Helen, afterward, "I am very sure that poor Lurcher man
doesn't drink. Some says he does; but you never notice it on him. It's
just his eyes."

"His eyes?" queried Helen, wonderingly.

"Yes. He's sort of blind. His eyelids keep fluttering all the time. He
can't control them. And, if you notice, he usually lifts up the lid of one
eye with his finger before he makes one of his base-runs for the next
post. Chee! I'd hate to be like that."

"The poor old man! And can nothing be done for it?"

"Plenty, I reckon. But who's goin' to pay for it? Not him--he ain't got it
to pay. We all has our troubles down here, Helen."

The girls had come down from the home of Sadie again, and Helen was
preparing to leave her friend.

"Aren't there places to go in the city to have one's eyes examined? Free
hospitals, I mean?"

"Sure! And they got Lurcher to one, once. But all they give him was a
prescription for glasses, and it would cost a lot to get 'em. So it didn't
do him no good."

Helen looked at Sadie suddenly. "How much would it take for the glasses?"
she asked.

"I dunno. Ten dollars, mebbe."

"And do you s'pose he could have that prescription now?" asked Helen,
eagerly.

"Mebbe. But why for?"

"Perhaps I could--could get somebody uptown interested in his case who is
able to pay for the spectacles."

"Chee, that would be bully!" cried Sadie.

"Will you find out about the prescription?"

"Sure I will," declared Sadie. "Nex' time you come down here, Helen, I'll
know all about it. And if you can get one of them rich ladies up there to
pay for 'em--Well! it would beat goin' to a swell restaurant for a
feed--eh?" and she laughed, hugged the Western girl, and then darted
across the sidewalk to intercept a possible customer who was loitering
past the row of garments displayed in front of the Finkelstein shop.

But Helen did not get downtown again as soon as she expec