Elsie’s father had been a cutter for Fox & Otter, cloaks and furs, on lower Broadway.  He was an old man, with a slow and limping gait, so a pot-hunter of a newly licensed chauffeur ran him down one day when livelier game was scarce.  They took the old man home, where he lay on his bed for a year and then died, leaving $2.50 in cash and a letter from Mr. Otter offering to do anything he could to help his faithful old employee.  The old cutter regarded this letter as a valuable legacy to his daughter, and he put it into her hands with pride as the shears of the dread Cleaner and Repairer snipped off his thread of life.

That was the landlord’s cue; and forth he came and did his part in the great eviction scene.  There was no snowstorm ready for Elsie to steal out into, drawing her little red woollen shawl about her shoulders, but she went out, regardless of the unities.  And as for the red shawl—­back to Blaney with it!  Elsie’s fall tan coat was cheap, but it had the style and fit of the best at Fox & Otter’s.  And her lucky stars had given her good looks, and eyes as blue and innocent as the new shade of note paper, and she had $1 left of the $2.50.  And the letter from Mr. Otter.  Keep your eye on the letter from Mr. Otter.  That is the clue.  I desire that everything be made plain as we go.  Detective stories are so plentiful now that they do not sell.

And so we find Elsie, thus equipped, starting out in the world to seek her fortune.  One trouble about the letter from Mr. Otter was that it did not bear the new address of the firm, which had moved about a month before.  But Elsie thought she could find it.  She had heard that policemen, when politely addressed, or thumbscrewed by an investigation committee, will give up information and addresses.  So she boarded a downtown car at One Hundred and Seventy-seventh street and rode south to Forty-second, which she thought must surely be the end of the island.  There she stood against the wall undecided, for the city’s roar and dash was new to her.  Up where she had lived was rural New York, so far out that the milkmen awaken you in the morning by the squeaking of pumps instead of the rattling of cans.

A kind-faced, sunburned young man in a soft-brimmed hat went past Elsie into the Grand Central Depot.  That was Hank Ross, of the Sunflower Ranch, in Idaho, on his way home from a visit to the East.  Hank’s heart was heavy, for the Sunflower Ranch was a lonesome place, lacking the presence of a woman.  He had hoped to find one during his visit who would congenially share his prosperity and home, but the girls of Gotham had not pleased his fancy.  But, as he passed in, he noted, with a jumping of his pulses, the sweet, ingenuous face of Elsie and her pose of doubt and loneliness.  With true and honest Western impulse he said to himself that here was his mate.  He could love her, he knew; and he would surround her with so much comfort, and cherish her so carefully that she would be happy, and make two sunflowers grow on the ranch where there grew but one before.