a job.  I hadn’t saved a cent, and I didn’t know what I was going to do.  Mildred—­that’s my daughter—­is big of her age and good-looking, and she wanted to leave school and go to work, but I wouldn’t let her.  Well, I studied up all the advertisements and I tried, and I couldn’t do a thing.  Then I set my wits to work.  I ain’t one to give up in a hurry; I never was.  As I said before, I didn’t have much money, but I hire our little flat of a woman, and she’s a good sort, and she’s willing to wait, and a month ago I took every cent I could raise and I went through a course of treatment with a beauty-doctor.  I had my hair (it was turned some) dyed, and I was massaged until I felt like a currant-bun, but I always had a good skin, and there was something to work on, and I took my figure in hand; that wasn’t very bad, anyway, but I got new corsets, awful expensive ones, and had a tailor suit made.  I had to raise some money on a little jewelry I had, but I made up my mind it was neck or nothing, and, sir, a month ago I got that place in Adkins & Somers’s at a thousand a year.  They are good men, too.  You needn’t think there’s anything wrong.”  She looked at them with an expression as if she was ready to spring at the slightest intimation of distrust on their part.  “It is only just that people think they want young help and they are going to have it.  I’ve got the place and I’m in clover, and it’s worth something looking so much better, though it don’t make much difference to me.  All I care about nowadays is my daughter.”

The two men looked at the woman, Carroll with a courteous sympathy, and the interest of an observer of human nature.  She was of a pronounced American type, coarse, vulgar, strident-voiced, smart, with a shrewdly working brain and of an unimpeachable heart.  She was generosity and honesty itself, as she looked at the two men in a similar strait to the one from which she had extricated herself.

The other man, who had a bitter, possibly a dangerous strain developed by his misfortunes, laughed sardonically.  “How long do you think you can keep it up?” said he.  “Hm?” Had he been less worn and weary, and apparently even starved, his laugh and question would have evoked a sharper response.  As it was, the woman replied with the utmost good-nature.

“Any old time,” said she.  “Lord!  I ain’t setting up for a kid.  I ain’t fool enough to put on short skirts and pigtails, but I am setting up for a young lady, and I can keep it up, anyhow.  Lord!  I ain’t so very old, anyhow.  If I didn’t look the way I do now, I couldn’t get a position, because they’d put me down for a back-number; but I had something left for that beauty-doctor to work on.”  Then she gazed critically at the two men.  “It wouldn’t take much to make you into a regular dude,” said she to Carroll.  “You are dressed to beat the band as it is.  Say!” She gave him a confidential wink.

“Well?” said Carroll.