th one wet season when the potato crop was so bad. Well, it seems
Maggie has worked a couple of years for Aunt Isabella as kitchen girl.
Then she's got ambitious, quit service, and got a flatwork job in a
hand laundry--eight per, fourteen hours a day, Saturday sixteen.

I didn't tumble why all this was worth chinnin' about until Aunt
Isabella reminds me that she's president and board of directors of the
Lady Pot Wrestlers' Improvement Society. She's one of the kind that
spends her time tryin' to organise study classes for hired girls who
have different plans for spendin' their Thursday afternoons off.

Seems that Aunt Isabella has been keepin' special tabs on Maggie,
callin' at the laundry to give her good advice, and leavin' her books
to read,--which I got a tintype of her readin', not,--and otherwise
doin' the upliftin' act accordin' to rule. But along in the early
summer Maggie had quit the laundry without consultin' the old girl
about it. Aunt Isabella kept on the trail, though, run down her last
boardin' place, and begun writin' her what she called helpful letters.
She kept this up until she was handed the ungrateful jolt. The last
letter come back to her with a few remarks scribbled across the face,
indicatin' that readin' such stuff gave Maggie a pain in the small of
her back. But the worst of it all was, accordin' to Aunt Isabella,
that Maggie was in Coney Island.

"Think of it!" says she. "That poor, innocent girl, living in that
dreadfully wicked place! Isn't it terrible?"

"Oh, I don't know," says I. "It all depends."

"Hey?" says the old girl. "What say?"

Ever try to carry on a debate through a silver salt shaker? It's the
limit. Thinkin' it would be a lot easier to agree with her, I shouts
out, "Sure thing!" and nods my head. She nods back and rolls her eyes.

"She must be rescued at once!" says Aunt Isabella. "Her uncle ought to
be notified. Can't you send for him?"

As it happens, Dennis had come down that mornin' to see an old friend
of his that was due to croak; so I figures it out that the best way
would be to get him and the old lady together and let 'em have it out.
I chases Swifty down to West 11th-st. to bring Dennis back in a hurry,
and invites Aunt Isabella to make herself comfortable until he comes.

She's too excited to sit down, though. She goes pacin' around the
front office, now and then lookin' me over suspicious,--me bein' still
in my gym. suit,--and then sizin' u