and heavy
mug, Mercedes sipped three-dollar tea from a tiny cup of Belleek,
rose-tinted, fragile as all egg-shell. In the same manner, his
twenty-five cent coffee was diluted with milk, her eighty cent Turkish
with cream.

"'Tis good enough for the old man," she told Saxon. "He knows no better,
and it would be a wicked sin to waste it on him."

Little traffickings began between the two women. After Mercedes had
freely taught Saxon the loose-wristed facility of playing accompaniments
on the ukulele, she proposed an exchange. Her time was past, she said,
for such frivolities, and she offered the instrument for the breakfast
cap of which Saxon had made so good a success.

"It's worth a few dollars," Mercedes said. "It cost me twenty, though
that was years ago. Yet it is well worth the value of the cap."

"But wouldn't the cap be frivolous, too?" Saxon queried, though herself
well pleased with the bargain.

"'Tis not for my graying hair," Mercedes frankly disclaimed. "I shall
sell it for the money. Much that I do, when the rheumatism is not
maddening my fingers, I sell. La la, my dear, 'tis not old Barry's fifty
a month that'll satisfy all my expensive tastes. 'Tis I that make up the
difference. And old age needs money as never youth needs it. Some day
you will learn for yourself."

"I am well satisfied with the trade," Saxon said. "And I shall make me
another cap when I can lay aside enough for the material."

"Make several," Mercedes advised. "I'll sell them for you, keeping, of
course, a small commission for my services. I can give you six dollars
apiece for them. We will consult about them. The profit will more than
provide material for your own."

CHAPTER V

Four eventful things happened in the course of the winter. Bert and Mary
got married and rented a cottage in the neighborhood three blocks away.
Billy's wages were cut, along with the wages of all the teamsters in
Oakland. Billy took up shaving with a safety razor. And, finally, Saxon
was proven a false prophet and Sarah a true one.

Saxon made up her mind, beyond any doubt, ere she confided the news
to Billy. At first, while still suspecting, she had felt a frightened
sinking of the heart and fear of the unknown and unexperienced. Then had
come economic fear, as she contemplated the increased expense entailed.
But by the time she had made surety doubly sure, all was swept away
before a wave of passionate gladness. HERS AND BILLY'S! The phrase was