eet, dirt
disguised her. Attired in tatters and grime, she went unseen.

There came a time, however, when the young men of the vicinity said:
"Dat Johnson goil is a puty good looker." About this period her
brother remarked to her: "Mag, I'll tell yeh dis! See? Yeh've edder
got teh go teh hell or go teh work!" Whereupon she went to work,
having the feminine aversion of going to hell.

By a chance, she got a position in an establishment where they made
collars and cuffs. She received a stool and a machine in a room where
sat twenty girls of various shades of yellow discontent. She perched
on the stool and treadled at her machine all day, turning out collars,
the name of whose brand could be noted for its irrelevancy to anything
in connection with collars. At night she returned home to her mother.

Jimmie grew large enough to take the vague position of head of the
family. As incumbent of that office, he stumbled up-stairs late at
night, as his father had done before him. He reeled about the room,
swearing at his relations, or went to sleep on the floor.

The mother had gradually arisen to that degree of fame that she could
bandy words with her acquaintances among the police-justices.
Court-officials called her by her first name. When she appeared they
pursued a course which had been theirs for months. They invariably
grinned and cried out: "Hello, Mary, you here again?" Her grey head
wagged in many a court. She always besieged the bench with voluble
excuses, explanations, apologies and prayers. Her flaming face and
rolling eyes were a sort of familiar sight on the island. She measured
time by means of sprees, and was eternally swollen and dishevelled.

One day the young man, Pete, who as a lad had smitten the Devil's Row
urchin in the back of the head and put to flight the antagonists of his
friend, Jimmie, strutted upon the scene. He met Jimmie one day on the
street, promised to take him to a boxing match in Williamsburg, and
called for him in the evening.

Maggie observed Pete.

He sat on a table in the Johnson home and dangled his checked legs with
an enticing nonchalance. His hair was curled down over his forehead in
an oiled bang. His rather pugged nose seemed to revolt from contact
with a bristling moustache of short, wire-like hairs. His blue
double-breasted coat, edged with black braid, buttoned close to a red
puff tie, and his patent-leather shoes looked like murder-fitted
weapons.

H