nts
for lunch. Another dime was to be added to her small store of savings;
and five cents was to be squandered for licorice drops--the kind that
made your cheek look like the toothache, and last as long. The licorice
was an extravagance--almost a carouse--but what is life without
pleasures?

Dulcie lived in a furnished room. There is this difference between a
furnished room and a boardinghouse. In a furnished room, other people
do not know it when you go hungry.

Dulcie went up to her room--the third floor back in a West Side
brownstone-front. She lit the gas. Scientists tell us that the diamond
is the hardest substance known. Their mistake. Landladies know of a
compound beside which the diamond is as putty. They pack it in the tips
of gas-burners; and one may stand on a chair and dig at it in vain
until one's fingers are pink and bruised. A hairpin will not remove it;
therefore let us call it immovable.

So Dulcie lit the gas. In its one-fourth-candlepower glow we will
observe the room.

Couch-bed, dresser, table, washstand, chair--of this much the landlady
was guilty. The rest was Dulcie's. On the dresser were her treasures--a
gilt china vase presented to her by Sadie, a calendar issued by a pickle
works, a book on the divination of dreams, some rice powder in a glass
dish, and a cluster of artificial cherries tied with a pink ribbon.

Against the wrinkly mirror stood pictures of General Kitchener, William
Muldoon, the Duchess of Marlborough, and Benvenuto Cellini. Against one
wall was a plaster of Paris plaque of an O'Callahan in a Roman helmet.
Near it was a violent oleograph of a lemon-coloured child assaulting an
inflammatory butterfly. This was Dulcie's final judgment in art; but
it had never been upset. Her rest had never been disturbed by whispers
of stolen copes; no critic had elevated his eyebrows at her infantile
entomologist.

Piggy was to call for her at seven. While she swiftly makes ready, let
us discreetly face the other way and gossip.

For the room, Dulcie paid two dollars per week. On week-days her
breakfast cost ten cents; she made coffee and cooked an egg over the
gaslight while she was dressing. On Sunday mornings she feasted royally
on veal chops and pineapple fritters at "Billy's" restaurant, at a
cost of twenty-five cents--and tipped the waitress ten cents. New York
presents so many temptations for one to run into extravagance. She had
her lunches in the department-store restaurant at