let her do one of me.
Now, you'd thought Swifty, with that before-takin' mug of his, would
have hid in the cellar 'fore he'd let anybody make a cast of it; but
when the proposition is sprung, he's as pleased as if it was for the
front page of Fox's pink.

That was what fetched me up to that seven by nine joint of hers, next
the roof, to have a look at what she'd done to Swifty Joe. He tows me
up there. And say, blamed if she hadn't got him to the life, broken
nose, ingrowin' forehead, whopper jaw, and all!

"How about it?" says Joe, grinnin' at me as proud as if he'd broke into
the Fordham Heights Hall of Fame.

"I never see anything handsomer--of the kind," says I.

Then I got to askin' questions about the sculpturin' business, and how
the market was; so Miss Belter and me gets more or less acquainted.
She was a meek, slimpsy little thing, with big, hungry lookin' eyes,
and a double hank of cinnamon coloured hair that I should have thought
would have made her neck ache to carry around.

Judgin' by the outfit in her ranch, the sculp-game ain't one that
brings in sable lined coats and such knickknacks. There was a bed
couch in one corner, a single burner gas stove on an upended trunk in
another, and chunks of clay all over the place. Light housekeepin' and
art don't seem to mix very well. Maybe they're just as tasty, but I'd
as soon have my eggs cooked in a fryin' pan that hadn't been used for a
mortar bed.

We passed the time of day reg'lar after that, and now and then she'd
drop into the front office to show me some piece she'd made. I finds
out that the C. A. in her name stands for Cornelia Ann; so I drops the
Miss Belter and calls her that.

"Father always calls me that, too," says she.

"Yes?" says I.

That leads up to the story of how the old folks out in Minnekeegan have
been backin' her for a two years' stab at art in a big city. Seems it
has been an awful drain on the fam'ly gold reserve, and none of 'em
took any stock in such foolishness anyway, but she'd jollied 'em into
lettin' her have a show to make good, and now the time was about up.

"Well," says I, "you ain't all in, are you?"

Her under lip starts to pucker up at that, and them hungry eyes gets
foggy; but she takes a new grip on herself, makes a bluff at grinnin',
and says, throaty like, "It's no use pretending any longer, I--I'm a
failure!"

Say, that makes me feel like an ice cream sign in a blizzard. I hadn't
been lookin' to