“What you tidying up so fer, Joe?” asked his mother that night; “you goin’ out?”

“No,” said Joe evasively, as he endeavoured in vain to coax back the shine to an old pair of shoes.

“Well, I’m right glad you ain’t.  Berney and Dick ain’t got up the coal, and there’s all them dishes to wash, and the baby she’s got a misery in her year.”

“Has paw turned up?” asked Joe.

“Yes,” answered Mrs. Ridder indifferently.  “He looked in ’bout three o’clock.  He was tolerable full then, and I ’spec he’s been took up by now.  He said he was goin’ to buy me a bird-cage with a bird in it, but I surely hope he won’t.  Them white mice he brought me on his last spree chewed a hole in Berney’s stocking; besides, I never did care much for birds.  Good lands! what are you goin’ to wash yer head for?”

Joe was substituting a basin of water for a small girl in the nearest kitchen chair, and a howl ensued.

“Shut up, Lottie!” admonished Mrs. Ridder, “you ain’t any too good to set on the floor.  It’s a good thing this is pay-day, Joe, for the rent’s due and four of the children’s got their feet on the ground.  You paid up the grocery last week, didn’t you!”

Joe nodded a dripping head.

“Well, I’ll jes’ git yer money out of yer coat while I think about it,” she went on as she rummaged in his pocket and brought out nine dollars.

“Leave me a quarter,” demanded Joe, gasping beneath his soap-suds.

“All right,” said Mrs. Ridder accommodatingly; “now that Bob and Ike are gitting fifty cents a day, it ain’t so hard to make out.  I’ll be gittin’ a new dress first thing, you know.”

“I seen one up at the corner!” said Joe.

“A new dress?”

“Naw, a dressmaker.  She’s got out her sign.”

“What’s her name?” asked Mrs. Ridder, keen with interest.

“Mrs. R. Beaver, Modiste,” repeated Joe from the sign that floated in letters of gold in his memory.

“I knowed a Mrs. Beaver wunst, up on Eleventh Street—­a big, fat woman that got in a fuss with the preacher and smacked his jaws.”

“Did she have any children?” asked Joe.

“Seems like there was one, a pretty little tow-headed girl.”

“That’s her,” announced Joe conclusively.  “What was her name?”

“Lawsee, I don’t know.  I never would ‘a’ ricollected Mrs. Beaver ’cepten she was such a tarnashious woman, always a-tearin’ up stumps, and never happy unless she was rippitin’ ‘bout somethin’. What you want?  A needle and thread to mend your coat?  Why, what struck you?  You been wearin’ it that a-way for a month.  You better leave it be ’til I git time to fix it.”

But Joe had determined to work out the salvation of his own wardrobe.  Late in the evening after the family had retired, he sat before the stove with back humped and knees drawn up trying to coax a coarse thread through a small needle.  Surely no rich man need have any fear about entering the kingdom of heaven since Joe Ridder managed to get that particular thread through the eye of that particular needle!