ted her. Already she began to look on these two as her superior
cultivated ones, aristocrats, with whom it was a joy to live and for
whom it was a pleasure to work. To work for them, especially for Marie,
she would drop her old Nick, good dull man, in a moment.

An event which happened just at the right moment to decide things,
finally brought about the union of the three. One night Terry was
drinking in a saloon, talking philosophy, and quoting literature. Some
rapid lines from Swinburne had just left his lips when an elderly man,
who had been listening to Terry's talk approached him and said: "You are
the man I'm looking for, won't you have a drink?"

As he spoke, he flashed a fifty dollar bill over the bar and repeatedly
treated the crowd, all in Terry's honour.

"Before we separated that night," said Terry, telling me the story, "I
learned that the old guy had fifty thousand dollars and that he would
soon go down and out, for he had all sorts of bad diseases. He knew it
himself, but he was an old sport and he wanted his fling before he died.
He liked me and wanted me to be bar-tender in a saloon he owned. He
lived above the saloon and wanted a housekeeper to take care of the
rooms. So I told Kate here was her chance. The next day Marie, Katie,
and I moved into the rooms, where the old man lived, too, and I began my
work as a bar-tender.

"I did not regard this job as work: it was really graft, for I had
decided that my old friend, not long for this world, did not need all of
his money and that I might as well turn part of it toward Katie, to help
maintain a common house for us all. So, every night, after the day's
work, I turned the roll that I received behind the bar over to Katie,
who tucked it away in the bank. I don't know whether the old guy knew
about it or not, if he did, he did not care. He died after two or three
months, but Katie had increased her bank account by three or four
hundred dollars."

Terry is strenuous about this story. He is evidently anxious lest it be
thought that he later became a mere parasite on Katie. He prides himself
on having taught her to steal from an unkind world, but he does not like
the idea that she has slaved for him without any help in return. Katie
did not prove to be a good pupil. She was not naturally "wise," in the
slang sense, but gained what she gained by hard labour. Even while she
was housekeeper for the old guy she felt she earned all the money she
tucked away.