: 'You know, Miss Margery, your mother never 'ets
you have candy.' And Margery says: 'Well, she might change her mind any
minute--you can't tell; and it's best to have some on hand in case she
does.' And she'd got some poker chips out of the box to buy the candy
with--five blue chips she had, knowing they was nearly money anyway.

"And when Yetta seen it was only poker chips she knew the kid couldn't
buy candy with 'em--not even in Yonkers; so she didn't think any more
about it until it come over her--just like that--how quiet everything
was. Oh, that Yetta would certainly be found bone clear to the centre if
her skull was ever drilled--the same stuff they slaughter the poor
elephants for over in Africa--going so far away, with Yetta right there
to their hands, as you might say. And I'm getting sicker and sicker! I'd
have retained my calm mind, mind you, if they had been my own kids--but
kids of others I'd been sacredly trusted with!

"And then down the back stairs comes this here sandy-complected,
horse-faced plumber that had been frittering away his time all day up in
a bathroom over one little leak, and looking as sad and mournful as if
he hadn't just won eight dollars, or whatever it was. He must have been
born that way--not even being a plumber had cheered him up.

"'Blackhanders!'" he says right off, kind of brightening a little bit.

"I like to fainted for fair! He says they had lured the kids off with
candy and popcorn, and would hold 'em in a tenement house for ten
thousand dollars, to be left on a certain spot at twelve P.M. He seemed
to know a lot about their ways.

"'They got the Honourable Simon T. Griffenbaugh's youngest that way,'
he says, 'only a month ago. Likely the same gang got these two.'

"'How do you know?' I asks him.

"'Well,' he says, 'they's a gang of over two hundred of these I-talian
Blackhanders working right now on a sewer job something about two miles
up the road. That's how I know,' he says. 'That's plain enough, ain't
it? It's as plain as the back of my hand. What chance would them two
defenceless little children have with a gang of two hundred
Blackhanders?'

"But that looked foolish, even to me. 'Shucks!' I says. 'That don't
stand to reason.' But then I got another scare. 'How about water?' I
says. 'Any places round here they could fall into and get drownded?'

"He'd looked glum again when I said two hundred Blackhanders didn't
sound reasonable; but he cheers up at this and s