girls. Others were there with him—town dandies and nobodies, young men who came there to get shaved or to drink a glass of whisky. And all of these he admired and sought to emulate. Clothes were the main touchstone. If men wore nice clothes and had rings and pins, whatever they did seemed appropriate. He wanted to be like them and to act like them, and so his experience of the more pointless forms of life rapidly broadened. “Why don’t you get some of those hotel fellows to give you their laundry?” he asked of Jennie after she had related the afternoon’s experiences. “It would be better than scrubbing the stairs.” “How do you get it?” she replied. “Why, ask the clerk, of course.” This plan struck Jennie as very much worth while. “Don’t you ever speak to me if you meet me around there,” he cautioned her a little later, privately. “Don’t you let on that you know me.” “Why?” she asked, innocently. “Well, you know why,” he answered, having indicated before that when they looked so poor he did not want to be disgraced by having to own them as relatives. “Just you go on by. Do you hear?” “All right,” she returned, meekly, for although this youth was not much over a year her senior, his superior will dominated. The next day on their way to the hotel she spoke of it to her mother. “Bass said we might get some of the laundry of the men at the hotel to do.” Mrs. Gerhardt, whose mind had been straining all night at the problem of adding something to the three dollars which her six afternoons would bring her, approved of the idea. “So we might,” she said. “I’ll ask that clerk.” When they reached the hotel, however, no immediate opportunity presented itself. They worked on until late in the afternoon. Then, as fortune would have it, the housekeeper sent them in to scrub up the floor behind the clerk’s desk. That important individual felt very kindly toward mother and daughter. He liked the former’s sweetly troubled countenance and the latter’s pretty face. So he listened graciously
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