.
I've got two maids who steal my dresses and rings; a lady companion who
nags me about the way I talk, and who hates me alive because I can
afford to hire her; and even the hotel manager makes me pay double rates
because I look too young for a real widow. Do you know, there are times
when I almost miss the late Dippy. Were you ever real lonesome, Shorty?"

"Once or twice," says I, "when I was far from Broadway."

"That's nothing," says she, "to being lonesome _on_ Broadway. And I've
been so lonesome in a theatre box, with two thousand people in plain
sight, that I've dropped tears down on the trombone player in the
orchestra. And I was lonesome just now, when I picked you up back there.
I had been into that big jewelry store, buying things I didn't want,
just for the sake of having some one to talk to."

"Ah, say," says I, "cut it in smaller chunks, Sadie. I'm no pelican."

"You don't believe me?" says she.

"I know this little old burg too well," says I. "Why, with a
hundred-dollar bill I can buy more society than you could put in a
hall."

"But don't you see, Shorty," says she, "that the kind you can buy isn't
worth having? You don't buy yours, do you? And I don't want to buy mine.
I want to swap even. I'm not a freak, nor a foreigner, nor a quarantine
suspect. Look at all these women going past--what's the difference
between us? But they're not lonesome, I'll bet. They have friends and
dear enemies by the hundreds, while I haven't either. There isn't a
single home on this whole island where I can step up and ring the front
door-bell. I feel like a tramp hanging to the back of a parlor-car. What
good does my money do me? Suppose I want to take dinner at a swell
restaurant--I wouldn't know the things to order, and I'd be afraid of
the waiters. Think of that, Shorty."

I tried to; but it was a strain. If anyone else had put it up to me that
Sadie Sullivan, with a roll of real money as big as a bale of cotton,
could lose her nerve just because she didn't have a visitin'-list, I'd
have told 'em to drop the pipe. She was giving me straight goods,
though. Why, her lip was tremblin' like a lost kid's.

"Chuck it!" says I. "For a girl that had a whole bunch of Johnnies on
the waitin' list, and her with only one best dress to her name at the
time, you give me an ache. I don't set up for no great judge of form and
figure; but my eyesight's still good, I guess, and if I was choosin' a
likely looker, I'd back you agains