of lively young hysteria on my hands. But I just puts my hand on her head and tells her to 'Never mind,' and then I slips out and shuts the door.

"I calls a bellboy who has got some money in tips for drinks and other things from my room and I asks him to slip down to the office and see who's registered for room 346. I knew I couldn't find out, as the foxy proprietors of this rotten old dump don't keep a regular book register, but a card index, so that they can tear up a card easy and destroy it in case any angry husband or irate wife tries to drag them into the divorce courts with evidence.

"The boy beats it downstairs and comes back in double quick time, owin' possibly to some extent to the big four bit piece I slipped into his hand. I waits for him to say something, and when he said it I wouldn't have had to ask him, for I knew it in advance.

"'It's John Brown and wife,' he tells me, winkin' solemn and wise-like.

"'That'll do for you,' I tells him. Then I don't waste no time, but jump into my clothes and beat it for that little girl with the auburn hair.

"'You come with me—pack up an' git,' I tells her.

"'Why, what, but Uncle Dave—'

"'T'ell with Uncle Dave,' says I, not feeling sanctimonious; 'hustle up now.'

"The little dear looks kind of bewildered, but I'm feelin' so proud and bully in my heart to see that she's trustin' me and doin' as I say. I bundles her out of the dump fast as I can do it and just as we reaches the door up rushes a big, fat, apoplectic old Santy Claus and blusters:

"'Here, you, where you going with that girl?'

"'Say, you cradle robbing old pork barrel, back stage for you in a hurry or I'll sic the dangle wagon onto you. Skidoo now and no back talk, or I'll read about you in the morning papers with great eclat,' I says.

"He does a little Swiss yodle or something back in his throat and then he notices a big boy in a blue suit swingin' a piece of mahogany comin' our way and he don't stop to tip his hat.

"The little dear don't understand it all, but she's bright, if unsophisticated, and I could have just hugged her right there on the street for trusting me in comparison to him, as smug and sleek as Father O'Hara, though that's as far as the comparison goes.

"I takes the little darling over to the North Side with me to the home of a fine little actor and his wife, who are more for real home than they are for the gay life. And they don't ask no questions, but just take her right in to their hearthside.

"Little Madge was too proud for them, though, even if she had been an orphan and allowed herself to be given a home when she was too small to work and didn't know how to beg, much less spurn any charity.

"She goes out every day to look for work. She don't find anybody that wants to hire a girl in a made-over alpaca and clodhopper shoes, though her form and figure is something you don't see in them automobiles that whizz up and down on the boulevards.

"She tries to get into a show company, being of that temperament and having a real voice, and she has some narrow escapes from bumping up against fake booking agencies that would have sold her into the same kind of a gilded palace of sin Uncle Dave had cooked up for her.

"One day, when she's walking on State street, so shoddy that her little bare feet are touching the pavement through the holes in her soles, she sees a big sign and the wigs in the windows of Burnham's hair store.

"She goes in there. A clerk steps up to her, kind of smart-like, and she almost bowls him over. She just reached up, pulls out a couple of pins, takes off her hat and down drops a regular Niagara of Titian tinted tresses.

"'How much for this?' she asks him.

"He just gasps and goes back to tell it all to Mr. Burnham, and that individual comes out and dickers with her right then and there for the purchase of her crown of glory.

"She got sixteen dollars an ounce—a big, fat bank roll. She reinvests some of it for enough false hair to make her look all right and then she goes over to one of the big stores and buys the kind of clothes that nobody knows how to wear like her.

"It's the most stunning little beauty in the world that comes home that night. With her clothes and her beauty she don't have no trouble at all to make an engagement. Those two maiden aunts are living in a little bungalow that she's built for them out in a suburb of Chicago today; and me—I'm on the job right here just as you see me.

"Uncle Dave? He turned up—not so many days ago. And he has the pneumogastric to try to chuckle her under the chin just like he used to in Springfield. And she don't say a word.

"She just turns white as a bit of powdered chalk. I catches her as she keels over. I holds her with one hand. With the other I sticks a hatpin into Uncle Dave where it will do the most good."