you staying at Pearlie's house?" asked Sid tenderly, when they
reached the Burke House. The leading lady glanced up at the windows of
the stifling little room that faced west.

"No," answered she, and paused at the foot of the steps to the ladies'
entrance. The light from the electric globe over the doorway shone on
her hair and sparkled in the folds of her spangled scarf.

"I'm not staying at Pearlie's because my name isn't Ethel Evans. It's
Aimee Fox, with a little French accent mark over the double E. I'm
leading lady of the 'Second Wife' company and old enough to be--well,
your aunty, anyway. We go out at one-thirty to-morrow morning."

IX

THAT HOME-TOWN FEELING

We all have our ambitions. Mine is to sit in a rocking-chair on the
sidewalk at the corner of Clark and Randolph Streets, and watch the
crowds go by. South Clark Street is one of the most interesting and
cosmopolitan thoroughfares in the world (New Yorkers please sniff). If
you are from Paris, France, or Paris, Illinois, and should chance to be
in that neighborhood, you will stop at Tony's news stand to buy your
home-town paper. Don't mistake the nature of this story. There is
nothing of the shivering-newsboy-waif about Tony. He has the voice of a
fog-horn, the purple-striped shirt of a sport, the diamond scarf-pin of a
racetrack tout, and the savoir faire of the gutter-bred. You'd never
pick him for a newsboy if it weren't for his chapped hands and the
eternal cold-sore on the upper left corner of his mouth.

It is a fascinating thing, Tony's stand. A high wooden structure rising
tier on tier, containing papers from every corner of the world. I'll
defy you to name a paper that Tony doesn't handle, from Timbuctoo to
Tarrytown, from South Bend to South Africa. A paper marked Christiania,
Norway, nestles next to a sheet from Kalamazoo, Michigan. You can get
the War Cry, or Le Figaro. With one hand, Tony will give you the Berlin
Tageblatt, and with the other the Times from Neenah, Wisconsin. Take
your choice between the Bulletin from Sydney, Australia, or the Bee from
Omaha.

But perhaps you know South Clark Street. It is honeycombed with good
copy--man-size stuff. South Clark Street reminds one of a slatternly
woman, brave in silks and velvets on the surface, but ragged, and rumpled
and none too clean as to nether garments. It begins with a tenement so
vile, so filthy, so repulsive, that the municipal authorities deny its
v