pay-day, you know, is on Monday. Come around any time after ten."

"Oh, it don't matter," said Penny. As he walked along on his return he
reflected deeply how he could invest his twenty cents in food to last
until Monday morning any time after ten. He bought two coffee cakes in a
third avenue bakery. They were very beautiful. Each had a hole in the
centre, and a handsome scallop all around the edges.

Penny took great care of those cakes. At odd times he would rise from
his work and go to see that no escape had been made. On Sunday he got up
at noon and compressed breakfast and noon into one meal. Afterwards he
had almost three-quarters of a cake still left to him. He congratulated
himself that with strategy he could make it endure until Monday morning
any time after ten.

At three in the afternoon there came a faint-hearted knock. "Come in,"
said Penny. The door opened and old Tim Connegan, who was trying to be a
model, looked in apprehensively. "I beg pardon, sir," he said at once.

"Come in, Tim, you old thief," said Penny. Tim entered slowly and
bashfully. "Sit down," said Penny. Tim sat down and began to rub his
knees, for rheumatism had a mighty hold upon him.

Penny lit his pipe and crossed his legs. "Well, how goes it?"

Tim moved his square jaw upward and flashed Penny a little glance.

"Bad?" said Penny.

The old man raised his hand impressively. "I've been to every studio in
the hull city, and I never see such absences in my life. What with the
seashore and the mountains, and this and that resort, I think all the
models will be starved by fall. I found one man in up on Fifty-seventh
Street. He ses to me: 'Come around Tuesday--I may want yez and I may
not.' That was last week. You know, I live down on the Bowery, Mr.
Pennoyer, and when I got up there on Tuesday, he ses: 'Confound you, are
you here again?' ses he. I went and sat down in the park, for I was too
tired for the walk back. And there you are, Mr. Pennoyer. What with
trampin' around to look for men that are thousand miles away, I'm near
dead."

"It's hard," said Penny.

"It is, sir. I hope they'll come back soon. The summer is the death of
us all, sir; it is. Sure, I never know where my next meal is coming
until I get it. That's true."

"Had anything to-day?"

"Yes, sir, a little."

"How much?"

"Well, sir, a lady gave me a cup of coffee this morning. It was good,
too, I'm telling you."

Penny went to his cupboard. When he returned