He flourished the onion within an inch of Hetty’s nose.  The shop-lady did not retreat a hair’s-breadth.

“Then why do you eat onions,” she said, with biting contempt, “and nothing else?”

“I never said I did,” retorted the young man, heatedly.  “I said I had nothing else to eat where I live.  I am not a delicatessen store-keeper.”

“Then why,” pursued Hetty, inflexibly, “were you going to eat a raw onion?”

“My mother,” said the young man, “always made me eat one for a cold.  Pardon my referring to a physical infirmity; but you may have noticed that I have a very, very severe cold.  I was going to eat the onion and go to bed.  I wonder why I am standing here and apologizing to you for it.”

“How did you catch this cold?” went on Hetty, suspiciously.

The young man seemed to have arrived at some extreme height of feeling.  There were two modes of descent open to him—­a burst of rage or a surrender to the ridiculous.  He chose wisely; and the empty hall echoed his hoarse laughter.

“You’re a dandy,” said he.  “And I don’t blame you for being careful.  I don’t mind telling you.  I got wet.  I was on a North River ferry a few days ago when a girl jumped overboard.  Of course, I—­”

Hetty extended her hand, interrupting his story.

“Give me the onion,” she said.

The young man set his jaw a trifle harder.

“Give me the onion,” she repeated.

He grinned, and laid it in her hand.

Then Hetty’s infrequent, grim, melancholy smile showed itself.  She took the young man’s arm and pointed with her other hand to the door of her room.

“Little Brother,” she said, “go in there.  The little fool you fished out of the river is there waiting for you.  Go on in.  I’ll give you three minutes before I come.  Potatoes is in there, waiting.  Go on in, Onions.”

After he had tapped at the door and entered, Hetty began to peel and wash the onion at the sink.  She gave a gray look at the gray roofs outside, and the smile on her face vanished by little jerks and twitches.

“But it’s us,” she said, grimly, to herself, “it’s us that furnished the beef.”

THE HIDING OF BLACK BILL

A lank, strong, red-faced man with a Wellington beak and small, fiery eyes tempered by flaxen lashes, sat on the station platform at Los Pinos swinging his legs to and fro.  At his side sat another man, fat, melancholy, and seedy, who seemed to be his friend.  They had the appearance of men to whom life had appeared as a reversible coat—­seamy on both sides.

“Ain’t seen you in about four years, Ham,” said the seedy man.  “Which way you been travelling?”

“Texas,” said the red-faced man.  “It was too cold in Alaska for me.  And I found it warm in Texas.  I’ll tell you about one hot spell I went through there.

“One morning I steps off the International at a water-tank and lets it go on without me.  ’Twas a ranch country, and fuller of spite-houses than New York City.  Only out there they build ’em twenty miles away so you can’t smell what they’ve got for dinner, instead of running ’em up two inches from their neighbors’ windows.