ise ring or invited her upon a voyage to mysterious, distant
"Parsifal."

Tildy was a good waitress, and the men tolerated her. They who sat
at her tables spoke to her briefly with quotations from the bill of
fare; and then raised their voices in honeyed and otherwise-flavoured
accents, eloquently addressed to the fair Aileen. They writhed in
their chairs to gaze around and over the impending form of Tildy,
that Aileen's pulchritude might season and make ambrosia of their
bacon and eggs.

And Tildy was content to be the unwooed drudge if Aileen could
receive the flattery and the homage. The blunt nose was loyal to the
short Grecian. She was Aileen's friend; and she was glad to see her
rule hearts and wean the attention of men from smoking pot-pie and
lemon meringue. But deep below our freckles and hay-coloured hair
the unhandsomest of us dream of a prince or a princess, not
vicarious, but coming to us alone.

There was a morning when Aileen tripped in to work with a slightly
bruised eye; and Tildy's solicitude was almost enough to heal any
optic.

"Fresh guy," explained Aileen, "last night as I was going home at
Twenty-third and Sixth. Sashayed up, so he did, and made a break.
I turned him down, cold, and he made a sneak; but followed me down to
Eighteenth, and tried his hot air again. Gee! but I slapped him a
good one, side of the face. Then he give me that eye. Does it look
real awful, Til? I should hate that Mr. Nicholson should see it when
he comes in for his tea and toast at ten."

Tildy listened to the adventure with breathless admiration. No man
had ever tried to follow her. She was safe abroad at any hour of the
twenty-four. What bliss it must have been to have had a man follow
one and black one's eye for love!

Among the customers at Bogle's was a young man named Seeders, who
worked in a laundry office. Mr. Seeders was thin and had light hair,
and appeared to have been recently rough-dried and starched. He was
too diffident to aspire to Aileen's notice; so he usually sat at one
of Tildy's tables, where he devoted himself to silence and boiled
weakfish.

One day when Mr. Seeders came in to dinner he had been drinking beer.
There were only two or three customers in the restaurant. When Mr.
Seeders had finished his weakfish he got up, put his arm around
Tildy's waist, kissed her loudly and impudently, walked out upon the
street, snapped his fingers in the direction of the laundry, and hied
himself to pl