tabouret appropriately to her
words. "One lump, or two?... Yes, I just love bridge. No, I don't play,"
she continued, simpering; "but, just the same, I love it." With this
absurd ending, Aggie again arranged her feet according to her liking on
the opposite chair. "That's the kind of stuff she's had me doing," she
rattled on in her coarser voice, "and believe me, Joe, it's damned near
killing me. But all the same," she hurried on, with a swift revulsion
of mood to the former serious topic, "I'm for Mary strong! You stick to
her, Joe, and you'll wear diamon's.... And that reminds me! I wish she'd
let me wear mine, but she won't. She says they're vulgar for an innocent
country girl like her cousin, Agnes Lynch. Ain't that fierce?... How can
anything be vulgar that's worth a hundred and fifty a carat?"

CHAPTER IX. A LEGAL DOCUMENT.

Mary Turner spent less than an hour in that mysteriously important
engagement with Dick Gilder, of which she had spoken to Aggie. After
separating from the young man, she went alone down Broadway, walking the
few blocks of distance to Sigismund Harris's office. On a corner, her
attention was caught by the forlorn face of a girl crossing into the
side street. A closer glance showed that the privation of the gaunt
features was emphasized by the scant garments, almost in tatters.
Instantly, Mary's quick sympathies were aroused, the more particularly
since the wretched child seemed of about the age she herself had been
when her great suffering had befallen. So, turning aside, she soon
caught up with the girl and spoke an inquiry.

It was the familiar story, a father out of work, a sick mother, a brood
of hungry children. Some confused words of distress revealed the fact
that the wobegone girl was even then fighting the final battle of purity
against starvation. That she still fought on in such case proved enough
as to her decency of nature, wholesome despite squalid surroundings.
Mary's heart was deeply moved, and her words of comfort came with a
simple sincerity that was like new life to the sorely beset waif. She
promised to interest herself in securing employment for the father,
such care as the mother and children might need, along with a proper
situation for the girl herself. In evidence of her purpose, she took her
engagement-book from her bag, and set down the street and number of the
East Side tenement where the family possessed the one room that
mocked the word home, and she gave a b