-hide--ropin' wine bottles off the waiters' trays an'
such--until we got as friendly as a herd of tramps. They even got me
into a long-tailed coat an' a bullfrog vest; but I didn't take kindly
to that, 'count o' there not bein' any handy place to tote a gun except
the tail pocket, which I never could have got at in case the trouble
was to slop over.

I kept lookin' for little Maggie, an' one day I found her. I bought her
a couple o' pounds o' candy an' a lot o' new dresses; an' I took her
out to her home in a carriage. Well, this home o' hers was a thing to
wring the heart of an ossi-fied toad. It was up near the Barbery coast,
where they kill folks for exercise. She an' her mother was livin' in
two miserable rooms, her mother doin' washin' an' Maggie runnin'
errands; but they was as near respectable as half-fed people ever was
in the world, an' it made 'em hustle to even keep half fed, too, 'cause
they was in competition with the Chinks, who don't have to eat at
all--that is, not regular food.

An' would you believe it, her mother was the little Maggie I used to
know away back yonder in the kid days when all the world was just like
a big, bulgey Christmas-stocking. She had married a good man, an' had
come out to the coast with him on account of his health, an' he had
flickered out without leavin' her much but a stack o' doctor's bills
an' little Maggie. She had struggled along ever since, an' it made my
heart ache like a tooth to see the sweetness an' the beauty o' the
little girl I used to know come to the eyes o' this poor tired woman
an' smile--smile the same old smile like what she used to when I'd
given her an apple, or when she'd written me a little note an' sneaked
it across the aisle.

Well, I didn't stay long. I had a special swell function to attend that
night, but next mornin', when the Turkish-bath man was willin' to risk
the peace o' that locality by turnin' me loose, I gathered up a peck or
so o' watches an' cashed 'em in. I reckon I got beat some; but anyhow,
I drew down somethin' over sixteen hundred in yeller money; an' I took
them two Maggies down to the train an' shipped 'em back where the
little one would have a chance to grow up like a flower, with plenty o'
green grass an' sunshine about her, an' the mother could put on a clean
dress afternoons an' visit 'round a little with the friends o' long ago.

After they was gone everything seemed mighty gloomy an' damp an'
lonesome, an' I entered into