er
stocking or not, but I know she's mighty popular down in the part of
town where they worship the golden calf.

"Well, about two weeks ago, Mrs. Brown stops at the door and rubbers
at me for ten minutes. I'm sitting with my side to her, striking off
some manifold copies of a copper-mine proposition for a nice old man
from Tonopah. But I always see everything all around me. When I'm
hard at work I can see things through my side-combs; and I can leave
one button unbuttoned in the back of my shirtwaist and see who's
behind me. I didn't look around, because I make from eighteen to
twenty dollars a week, and I didn't have to.

"That evening at knocking-off time she sends for me to come up to
her apartment. I expected to have to typewrite about two thousand
words of notes-of-hand, liens, and contracts, with a ten-cent tip in
sight; but I went. Well, Man, I was certainly surprised. Old Maggie
Brown had turned human.

"'Child,' says she, 'you're the most beautiful creature I ever saw
in my life. I want you to quit your work and come and live with me.
I've no kith or kin,' says she, 'except a husband and a son or two,
and I hold no communication with any of 'em. They're extravagant
burdens on a hard-working woman. I want you to be a daughter to me.
They say I'm stingy and mean, and the papers print lies about my
doing my own cooking and washing. It's a lie,' she goes on. 'I
put my washing out, except the handkerchiefs and stockings and
petticoats and collars, and light stuff like that. I've got forty
million dollars in cash and stocks and bonds that are as negotiable
as Standard Oil, preferred, at a church fair. I'm a lonely old woman
and I need companionship. You're the most beautiful human being I
ever saw,' says she. 'Will you come and live with me? I'll show 'em
whether I can spend money or not,' she says.

"Well, Man, what would you have done? Of course, I fell to it. And,
to tell you the truth, I began to like old Maggie. It wasn't all on
account of the forty millions and what she could do for me. I was
kind of lonesome in the world too. Everybody's got to have somebody
they can explain to about the pain in their left shoulder and how
fast patent-leather shoes wear out when they begin to crack. And
you can't talk about such things to men you meet in hotels--they're
looking for just such openings.

"So I gave up my job in the hotel and went with Mrs. Brown. I
certainly seemed to have a mash on her. She'd look at me