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RS. PENCE wore a sensible gray hat, a plain gray longskirted suit, and always carried an umbrella. Her gray eyes had a habit of looking eagerly at every one and everything. Only the fine wrinkles around them bore out her frequent and rather proud assertion that she was sixty-five. There was something eager about her lips, too, and about her walk with its short quick step.

This suggestion of of eagerness showed even in the way she went to work each evening at six o'clock. From six until two she performed quietly and capably her duties as come-along lady for the Slagel Chinatown tours. At two o'clock she signed her time-card, gave it to the passenger agent, Moe Slagel, walked south on Broadway to the subway entrance, and boarded a train to Twenty-third Street. At half past two, after a toasted sandwich and a cup of tea at the corner restaurant, she turned west into Twenty-second Street, and five minutes later silently let herself into her room. On Sundays she rose at seven; other days she usually slept till noon. Afternoons she practised in water-colors, copying landscapes from advertisements in the magazines.

for eighteen months that October evening when she asked Moe Slagel for a night off. He looked at her sharply.

"Night off?" His coarse voice lifted suspiciously above the roar of theater-hour traffic. "Night off?" he repeated. "What for?”

"Just a vacation," Mrs. Pence explained. "Only the one evening. I want to go somewhere."

"This is busy season," Moe objected. He counted the tickets in his hand. "See me later, next week maybe. You got all day off. Go somewheres in daytime."

Mrs. Pence shook her head. "I can't," she said.

"Can't go in daytime?"

Moe laughed, suggestively. Mrs. Pence blushed. She couldn't tell Mr. Slagel where she wanted to go. It hardly seemed-well, it hardly seemed reasonable.

"Busy season," Moe said again. "Very well, sir," Mrs. Pence answered.

observed her admiringly. A crash of traffic on the corner, followed by the scream of police whistles, caused her to stand up abruptly in the bus. Her thin eager lips dropped open as she bent her head left and right, better to see the cause of the collision.

Chinatown. Last car to-night! See the original genu-wine Oriental joshhouse at no extry charge. Watch the high priests at their midnight rites! Free trip through a secret opium-den! Full of unfortunates and crooks of the underworld. You get police protection! Ladies and gentlemen-come one, come all! All-1-1

"That woman's a knock-out," he told Mike Walsh, driver of bus Number 9. "Best worker on the street. Worth her weight in gold. Look at her! See her put on? You'd think she was the original old lady from what-you-call-it!"

"Dubuque," Mike prompted.

"Yeh, Dubuque. She's got the by-heck racket down fine, I tell you! And that get-up! If she don't look like somebody's grandmaw out on a tear. Ever hear the line she puts out for the customers while I'm playin' my ballyhoo? Well, you ought'a listen some night."

He looked at his watch.

"Time to be going," he said. He walked out of the comparative quiet of the cross-street to the mad cataract of after-theater Broadway. His voice, when he lifted it, had an unyielding, metallic quality, as if he had tuned and tested it successfully against surface-car wheels, police whistles, and the thunder of overhead trains.

"All aboard!" he bawled. The resonant notes tumbled across the heads of the crowd. "All aboard for

He paused and sold two tickets. "All aboard! Last car to-night! Here's your last chance. Can't afford to miss it, lady. A full hour of thrills and chills! A long remembered tour in the land of the Tongs. See night life on the Bowery—most famous street in the world; gangs and gunmen. We guarantee police protection. Chinatown bus starts in three minutes-all aboard—”

Mrs. Pence was leaning forward now, her elbows on the seat in front of her. Six times to-night she had heard Moe Slagel recite his ballyhoo. Every night for eighteen months she had listened. Never had her face betrayed boredom. Always, with lips apart, eyes wide, she had sat rigid in apparent eagerness. Two girls, schoolmarms from the cornbelt Moe guessed, bought their tickets and piled in, giggling, beside respectable Mrs. Pence. She moved over politely. In doing so, she dropped her handbag into the seat in front.

"Excuse me," she said. Her voice was not like Moe's. It possessed a birdlike quality that never could be attuned to the roar of Broadway. She edged past the two girls, climbed around to the other seat, picked up the handbag, then hesitated.

"Don't bother moving aside," she said. "I'll stay where I am."

Moe had taught her that trick. Now he watched her admiringly while he tied up his ballyhoo. Men and women were buying tickets fast. Yes, a good trick, that dropped handbag. Old, but good just the same. Took her a bit to learn it, and she never seemed to understand what it was for.

He had tried to explain it. The come-along lady's job is to prevent an empty bus. Of course the first cash passengers will get into the seat with her. Nine times out of ten. Climb right in on top of her. Moe had heard that sheep were like that. Sheep, some one had told him, resembled Broadway crowds.

As soon as the first passengers climb aboard and sit down beside her, the come-along lady must move to another seat.

"If they all bunch together, it looks like one party," Moe explained. "Have to spread 'em out. Easiest way to do that is to drop your handbag."

But when he first tried to teach the trick to Mrs. Pence, she was dumb! Dumb? Man alive, you ought to have seen her! Now, with passengers in one seat and the comealong lady in another, it was easier to fill the bus. Moe chanted his ballyhoo. Other passengers piled in. A gay crowd, enthusiastic and credulous.

"Last bus to-night!" Moe was roaring. "Room for a few more! Start in two minutes. Night life on the Bowery-see the original genuwine josh-house and the Chinese high priest-"

Mrs. Pence turned with neighborly interest to the girls on the seat behind her. They inspected her gray hat, her

long plain gray skirt, her eager gray eyes, and became talkative.

"You ever been to Chinatown before?" one asked.

"No," she admitted. "I've always wanted to go—

"So have I," the girl said. "I saw a show once, a stock company in Des Moines. 'Midnight in Chinatown.' It certainly was thrilling!" "You from Des Moines?" asked Mrs. Pence.

"Don't tell me you are? Everywhere we go we meet people from Des Moines!"

"I'm from Marshalltown," Mrs. Pence explained. "Oh, a long time back. Eighteen ninety-eight-"

"All aboard!" Moe was yelling. Mrs. Pence looked at him quickly. She had forgotten her part for a moment. The stocky little man was walking toward her, his left hand lifted. Mike Walsh had climbed in behind the wheel, and the "professor," megaphone in hand, was standing in front, facing his audience.

Again Mrs. Pence dropped her handbag. This time it fell over the side to the street.

"Mercy!" she cried. She climbed down hurriedly, picked it up, brushed off the dust, and stood a moment anxiously examining it.

The bus pulled away without her. "Two more loads to-night," Moe told her. "Got to work fast.'

Another bus swung east and halted, and its tired crowd disembarked. Mrs. Pence stepped backward inconspicuously against the side of the building. The driver climbed down and lifted the hood of the engine. The "professor," his short megaphone under his arm, yawned, stretched, and lighted a cigarette.

"If I could have just one night," Mrs. Pence began earnestly.

"Forget it," Moe bade. "Some other time. This is busy season." He strolled toward Broadway. "All aboard for ChinatownMrs. Pence hurried across the sidewalk and climbed into the new bus. Again she looked up eagerly at the antics of the dancing electric signs. She read for the thousandth time the flaming invitations to chewing-gum, ginger-ale, soap and amusement. With undimmed eagerness she followed the barb of a flaming arrow around its circular flight.

"Original genu-wine Chinese joshhouse"

The bus began to fill. Mrs. Pence, obeying Moe's signal, once more dropped her handbag to the gutter, once more saw the swaying bus pull away with all seats occupied. At two o'clock she boarded the subway train. In her room before getting ready for bed, she sat a long time in her red plush chair, staring at the wall. Determination struggled against the eagerness that shone on her plain, respectable face. Conscience and desire waged unequal battle, and conscience was first to tire. She must get her night off. And she couldn't tell Mr. Slagel where she wanted to go. She nodded at herself in the mirror.

"I'll do it," she said. In the quiet of her room the birdlike voice had a stiffer note. "I'll do it," she repeated, as she turned off the gas.

22

She awakened four hours earlier than usual. The alarm-clock on the marble-topped wash-stand pointed virtuously to eight. It was a smoky,

gray morning. The single window at the rear gave upon a dun and dispirited vista of back yards, but as Mrs. Pence pulled on her sensible clothes, she looked out at it with the same unwavering interest that she had felt yesterday. Opposite her, the back windows of Twenty-first Street already were putting forth bravely their scant lines of morning laundry. She examined herself again, critically, in the glass.

"I don't look like a person who'd lie," she confessed.

As she opened the door Mother Burke's voice rose from below stairs in full-throated exasperation.

"This ain't Park Avenue and your name ain't Mrs. Mellon," she was telling Lulu. "Near noon, and you ain't turned over yet!"

Mrs. Pence descended quickly. The first floor was sacred to the Burkes and their misunderstandings and to the smell of soap and cookery. Except on Saturday, when it required a high order of cunning to escape without paying one's rent for a week in advance, Mother Burke did not approach her roomers. Mrs. Pence never had seen the double parlor doors ajar. She listened now uncomfortably to the despondent and profane logic going on inside. At length, timorously, she knocked. Silence greeted her. Then Mother Burke, towering, in a flowered kimono and with her mutinous hair spiked by hair-pins into submission above her flame-colored face, opened the door five inches.

"Good mornin', ma'am," she said. As an afterthought, she added noncommittally and with a rising inflection, "Nice day."

"I want to see " Mrs. Pence

hesitated. The eagerness that was shining on her face collapsed. "I want to see Lulu." She pushed the words off her tongue.

"Eh?" Mother Burke opened the door two and a half inches wider. "Want to see her? Sakes, and she ain't up, which her poor mother was tellin' her about-mayhap you heard me and it's the middle of the day and my back's near broke and there she lays like a dumplin' in gravy and half as useful. What you want to see her about?"

"I have a-I want her to work for me to-night-"

"Work!" The door opened another inch. Mother Burke's mouth widened into an ample O. "Hear that for a grand joke! Work, she says, and that offspring a-layin' on her back like she was the queen of Roosia! Work-"

It was Lulu herself, wan, slender, sleepy-eyed, who pulled the door five inches wider. She looked under her mother's flowered sleeve. She was taller than Mrs. Pence, but not so tall as Mother Burke.

"Want to take a job to-night, Lulu?" Mrs. Pence asked feverishly. "To work in my place. If you will

"What's it pay?" Lulu demanded, pulling her kimono closer to her slender throat. "And what hours?"

Mrs. Pence explained. Lulu heard without enthusiasm.

"Sure, I'll do you the favor," she agreed when the extent of her labors had been made clear. "Two dollars ain't much. I knew a girl once caught her death of cold sittin' in a bus like that. She was come-along lady for Greenwich Village Nightlife Tours. Looked like a model. Wore a smock. But I'll do you the favor."

"I'll give you a note then," said Mrs. Pence. "For Mr. Slagel." "That's the boss?"

"The passenger manager," Mrs. Pence corrected with dignity. "You'll find him on the corner. If he asks you anything you can just say I'm-"

The conscience that had come with her from Marshalltown in ninety-eight poked her vigorously in the ribs. She elbowed it away. "Tell him I'm sick," she lied.

There, she had said it.

Returning to her room, she wrote the note painstakingly. At five o'clock she gave it to Lulu, who read it at once.

"Best take an umbrella," Mrs. Pence counciled. "It's always damp that time of night. And rubbers. Mr. Slagel insists on rubbers."

"G'loshes," Lulu contradicted, "and a slicker. I dress warm. Careful of my health, I am."

"Oh," Mrs. Pence replied. She looked down-not very far down-at Lulu's skirts. Well, what right had she to judge the younger generation? Wasn't she as bad as any halfdressed little fool that ever caught cold? Hadn't she got this poor girl to act a part in a lie? Hadn't she written a lie, as white a lie as she'd ever dreamed about? And to Mr. Slagel, too! Good, honest Mr. Slagel, who paid her wages promptly every week. Well, just this onceshe could atone all the rest of her life. Lulu stuffed the envelop into the slicker pocket.

"Good-by," she said. "Pay me to-night or to-morrow?"

"Now, if you want," Mrs. Pence answered, and started back to her room for her handbag. Five minutes