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of frangipanni, while white clouds,
machine-embroidered, floated around him. Too many sweets bring
surfeit. He looked upon Hetty Pepper's homely countenance, emerald
eyes, and chocolate-colored hair as a welcome oasis of green in a desert
of cloying beauty. In a quiet angle of a counter he pinched her arm
kindly, three inches above the elbow. She slapped him three feet away
with one good blow of her muscular and not especially lily- white right.
So, now you know why Hetty Pepper came to leave the Biggest Store
at thirty minutes' notice, with one dime and a nickel in her purse.
This morning's quotations list the price of rib beef at six cents per
(butcher's) pound. But on the day that Hetty was "released" by the B. S.
the price was seven and one-half cents. That fact is what makes this

story possible. Otherwise, the extra four cents would have--
But the plot of nearly all the good stories in the world is concerned with
shorts who were unable to cover; so you can find no fault with this one.
Hetty mounted with her rib beef to her $3.50 third-floor back. One hot,
savory beef-stew for supper, a night's good sleep, and she would be fit
in the morning to apply again for the tasks of Hercules, Joan of Arc,
Una, Job, and Little-Red-Riding-Hood.
In her room she got the granite-ware stew-pan out of the 2x4-foot
china--er--I mean earthenware closet, and began to dig down in a
rats'-nest of paper bags for the potatoes and onions. She came out with
her nose and chin just a little sharper pointed.
There was neither a potato nor an onion. Now, what kind of a beef-
Stew can you make out of simply beef? You can make oyster-soup
without oysters, turtle-soup without turtles, coffee-cake without coffee,
but you can't make beef-stew without potatoes and onions.
But rib beef alone, in an emergency, can make an ordinary pine door
look like a wrought-iron gambling-house portal to the wolf. With salt
and pepper and a tablespoonful of flour (first well stirred in a little cold
water) 'twill serve--'tis not so deep as a lobster a la Newburg nor so
wide as a church festival doughnut; but 'twill serve.
Hetty took her stew-pan to the rear of the third-floor hall. According to
the advertisements of the Vallambrosa there was running water to be
found there. Between you and me and the water-meter, it only ambled
or walked through the faucets; but technicalities have no place here.
There was also a sink where housekeeping roomers often met to dump
their coffee grounds and glare at one another's kimonos.
At this sink Hetty found a girl with heavy, gold-brown, artistic hair and
plaintive eyes, washing two large "Irish" potatoes. Hetty knew the
Vallambrosa as well as any one not owning "double hextra- magnifying
eyes" could compass its mysteries. The kimonos were her encyclopedia,
her "Who's What?" her clearinghouse of news, of goers and comers.
From a rose-pink kimono edged with Nile green she had learned that
the girl with the potatoes was a miniature-painter living in a kind of
attic--or "studio," as they prefer to call it--on the top floor. Hetty was
not certain in her mind what a miniature was; but it certainly wasn't a
house; because house-painters, although they wear splashy overalls and
poke ladders in your face on the street, are known to indulge in a

riotous profusion of food at home.
The potato girl was quite slim and small, and handled her potatoes as
an old bachelor uncle handles a baby who is cutting teeth. She had a
dull shoemaker's knife in her right hand, and she had begun to peel one
of the potatoes with it.
Hetty addressed her in the punctiliously formal tone of one who intends
to be cheerfully familiar with you in the second round.
"Beg pardon," she said, "for butting into what's not my business, but if
you peel them potatoes you lose out. They're new Bermudas. You want
to scrape 'em. Lemme show you."
She took a potato and the knife, and began to demonstrate.
"Oh, thank you," breathed the artist. "I didn't know. And I did hate to
see the thick peeling go; it seemed such a waste. But I thought they
always had to be peeled. When you've got only potatoes to eat, the
peelings count, you know."
"Say, kid," said Hetty, staying her knife, "you ain't up against it, too,
are you?"
The miniature artist smiled starvedly.
"I suppose I am. Art--or, at least, the way I interpret it--doesn't seem to
be much in demand. I have only these potatoes for my dinner. But they
aren't so bad boiled and hot, with a little butter and salt."
"Child," said Hetty, letting a brief smile soften her rigid features,