CLARA E LAUGHLIN
 
 CLARA E. LAUGHLIN 
 
 The Penny Philanthropist 
 
 I2mo, cloth, net $1.00. 
 
 The Gleaners 
 
 A Novellette. Illustrated, I2mo, 
 decorated boards, net 750. 
 
 Everybody's Lonesome 
 
 A True Fairy Story. Illustrated by 
 A. I. Keller. I2mo, cloth, net 7$c. 
 
 The Lady in Gray 
 
 i2mo, decorated boards, net 5oc. 
 
 Divided 
 
 The story of a poem. Marginal 
 decorations in two colors, net 75c. 
 
 Miladi 
 
 izmo, cloth, net, $1.20. 
 
 When Joy Begins 
 
 A Study of a Woman's Life. I2mo, 
 half vellum, net 5oc. 
 
 The Evolution of a Girl's 
 Ideal 
 
 i6mo, decorated boards, net soc.
 
 Ho\\'s the Penny Philanthropy coming on, 1V. J 
 'Fine! Why don't you try it?" 
 
 'Couldn't make it work. I'll give you a dollar a day to give it 
 'What good'll that be doing you?" she demanded.
 
 The 
 
 Penny Philanthropist 
 
 A Story That Could Be True 
 
 By 
 CLARA E. LAUGH LIN 
 
 Author of " The Gleaners" "Everybody's Lone- 
 some" "Evolution of a Girl's Ideal" "The 
 Lady in Gray" "Divided" etc. 
 
 New York Chicago Toronto 
 Fleming H. Revel I Company 
 
 London and Edinburgh
 
 Copyright, 1912, by 
 FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 
 
 New York: 158 Fifth Avenue 
 Chicago: 125 North W abash Ave. 
 Toronto: 25 Richmond Street, W. 
 London: 21 Paternoster Square 
 Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street
 
 To D. B. 
 
 2136858
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 I. MAINLY DESCRIPTIVE . . .11 
 
 II. THE HERO APPEARS . . .18 
 
 III. You MEET PEGGY ... 25 
 
 IV. THE HERO GETS A JOB . . 36 
 
 V. A CRUMPLED NOTE ... 46 
 
 VI. THE PLOT THICKENS . . .55 
 
 VII. PETIE AND POLLY ... 68 
 
 VIII. ANNE BEGINS TO GET ACQUAINTED 79 
 
 IX. TOM GETS A MESSAGE . . 91 
 
 X. You CAN HEAR THE BREAKERS . 99 
 XL ANNE MAKES A SUGGESTION . 105 
 
 XII. TOM COMES TO GRIEF . .118 
 
 XIII. WRAPPED IN LUXURY . . .129 
 
 XIV. A SUDDEN DECISION . . .138 
 
 XV. ANNE WINS A POINT . . . 143 
 
 XVI. A FRANK DECLARATION . .147 
 
 XVII. FURTHER COMPLICATIONS . . 153 
 
 XVIII. A STRANGE SCENE . . .158 
 
 XIX. PAID BACK WITH INTEREST . 168 
 
 XX. BURNS EXPLAINS . . .174 
 XXL ANNE TELLS HER DREAM . .181 
 
 XXII. A CASE FOR TOM . . .187 
 
 XXIII. LUIGI SAYS NOTHING . . .197 
 
 XXIV. A HEROINE OF HIGH ROMANCE . 201 
 
 XXV. THE PEGGY CLUB . . .205
 
 I 
 
 In Which We Are Mainly Descriptive But I 
 Hope You'll Read It; Because There Worit 
 Be Any More Like It, And This Wouldn't 
 Be Here If It Could Have Been Left Out 
 
 IF this story had been written in the long- 
 ago, it would have, begun : " Gentle 
 reader, do you know Halsted Street?" 
 But if you were a gentle reader you probably 
 would not have known Halsted Street ; and 
 if it were long ago, you could not have known 
 it. For when it was the fashion to begin 
 stories in that way, Chicago was not on the 
 map. 
 
 True to the brisker fashion of story-telling 
 to which I am bred, I was about to begin : 
 " A light snow had been falling since three 
 o'clock, and at five-thirty, Halsted Street still 
 had a comparatively untrodden appearance " 
 indeed, I had actually so begun and was 
 well under way with my tale, when I was con- 
 fronted by one of those challenging questions 
 which are forever bobbing out of a writer's 
 critical mind to make him think despairingly 
 ii
 
 12 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 ill of the things that have just bobbed out of 
 his creative fancy. 
 
 " What will that mean to most readers ? " 
 urged this unanswerable disturber. " Why, 
 so far as they can be expected to know, 
 should not snow that has been falling on 
 Halsted Street since three o'clock still look 
 comparatively untrodden at five-thirty? 
 How many persons who read stories have 
 any reason to know Halsted Street as so 
 continuously busy a thoroughfare that snow 
 could not lie on it untrodden enough to 
 show individual footprints, except between 
 3 A. M., when night is over for some, and 
 5 : 30 A. M., when day is beginning for 
 others ? " 
 
 Why, indeed? If my story were con- 
 cerned with people on Whitechapel Road or 
 on The Bowery, I could do with less expla- 
 nation. Perhaps there will come a day when 
 Halsted Street may be as self-descriptive. 
 But, for the present, I am sure I shall do bet- 
 ter if I explain that Halsted Street, which 
 claims to be the longest street in the world 
 and is certainly one of the most cosmopoli- 
 tan, is the main artery of Chicago life for 
 many hundreds of thousands of citizens. For 
 a single carfare you may traverse on it, with- 
 out change of cars, an American city of com-
 
 MAINL Y DESCRIPTIVE 13 
 
 fortable, cultivated, middle-class folk ; a Ger- 
 man city second in population only to Berlin ; 
 a Polish city second only to Warsaw ; an 
 Italian city, a city of Russian Jews, a city of 
 Greeks, a city of Irish, a city of Bohemians, 
 and still nearing the Stock Yards a city of 
 Lithuanians ; and so on. 
 
 At Randolph Street is the wide, open space 
 still called The Haymarket, though now, by 
 nine or ten o'clock nights, laden market 
 wagons begin to wend thither from the truck 
 farms north and south and west, and at mid- 
 night the available space is packed, while 
 sleeping forms sprawl or huddle (according 
 to season) on loads of carrots and cabbages. 
 At three, the produce market is in full activ- 
 ity. 
 
 This is the heart of Chicago's Whitechapel 
 district. All around here live men and 
 women to whom there are no unknown 
 depths of degradation. The last stand of 
 the hope-abandoned, en route to Potter's 
 Field, is hereabouts. Pawn-shops and grog- 
 geries abound. The buildings are, for the 
 most part, little and mean and low many of 
 them mere wooden rookeries. Cheap hotels 
 are on every hand ; and two blocks south, 
 Halsted Street crosses Madison a busier 
 thoroughfare, more like The Bowery, with
 
 14 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 banks and theatres and easy-payment em- 
 poriums, and lodging-houses overflowing with 
 unemployed, and unemployable, men. 
 
 Three more blocks to the south, one comes 
 to Jackson Boulevard, a wide, asphalted 
 street which is the main artery for carriage 
 and automobile circulation east and west. 
 
 Down Halsted Street from the north from 
 the purlieus of aristocracy on the Lake Shore 
 come the limousines of manufacturers 
 whose enormous " works " are in the huge 
 industrial territory Halsted Street traverses ; 
 and the limousines of their wives and daugh- 
 ters en route to Hull-House (now probably 
 the most celebrated Social Settlement in the 
 world) to " study conditions," as present fash- 
 ion decrees. And across Halsted Street, on 
 Jackson Boulevard, come others of like sort, 
 from the business and shopping centres and 
 from the residential sections and suburbs of 
 the West Side. 
 
 A vortex of humanity, that particular sec- 
 tion of Halsted Street where our Peggy has 
 her background not far from The Hay- 
 market and its near-by dens, nor yet from the 
 haunts of the workless and despondent ; but 
 in the path of the passing prosperous. 
 
 Now that you know the general character 
 of that part of Halsted Street, I hope you
 
 MAINL Y DESCRIPTIVE 15 
 
 may without too much difficulty draw a 
 mental picture of a small section of it on a 
 chill mid-December morning towards six 
 o'clock : 
 
 On the corner is Neeley's saloon ; thirty 
 feet north of the corner is a narrow door over 
 which a sign says, " Family Entrance." 
 Neeley bought the sign along with the lease 
 and the license and the bar fixtures and the 
 lettering on the windows which says, " Fam- 
 ily Trade a Specialty," although everybody 
 knows how far from " family trade " Neeley's 
 specialty is. 
 
 Martinelli's coffee stall or lunch counter 
 comes next : a long, narrow store furnished 
 with a counter and stools, and serving day 
 and night the simplest refreshments. 
 
 The house adjoining Martinelli's on the 
 north is of red brick, two-story and basement, 
 with a high wooden " stoop." Years ago 
 when it was new just after the Chicago fire 
 it was the all-but-pretentious home of some 
 well-to-do family. Then came declining for- 
 tunes : boarding-house, first ; then lodging- 
 house ; then tenement. The front basement 
 room has a wee shop, now Peggy's. " Who- 
 iver," as she says, " 'd of thought I'd git to 
 be the owner of a daypartmint store : wan 
 daypartmint fer newspapers, an' wan fer
 
 16 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 maggyzines, an' wan fer chewin'-gum, an' 
 wan fer stamps ? " Behind the shop, a 
 kitchen living-room, and a tiny bedroom 
 which I suspect was once the kitchen pantry ; 
 these are Peggy's home. 
 
 On the other side of Peggy's shop is a 
 store where Levinsky deals, none too briskly, 
 in workmen's apparel : corduroys and jeans ; 
 cowhide shoes and leather gloves ; hickory 
 shirts and heavy socks and such gear. 
 
 Peggy has never known any other environ- 
 ment than this. She has sold papers on this 
 corner since she was six years old : first as a 
 stray merchant with her stock under her 
 arm ; then from a curbstone stand ; and now, 
 if you please, from what she calls an " im- 
 porium." She seldom goes far from here. 
 Why should she, when all the world comes 
 to her? 
 
 All else that I thought I must surely say 
 about Peggy before you see her I have 
 written and rewritten and thrown away. 
 She speaks best for herself. But to under- 
 stand her you must know the conditions 
 whose product she is. 
 
 Now, then ! We shall have the light 
 snowfall and those footprints and no more 
 topography. And I am glad that you are 
 to have a chance to meet her for your first
 
 MAINL Y DESCRIPTIVE 1 7 
 
 time in the dawn of a new day for days get 
 soiled quickly, on Halsted Street and in the 
 whiteness of a fresh snowfall which heavy 
 and heedless feet have not yet begun to 
 trample into mire.
 
 II 
 
 In Which We Get None Too Briskly Started, 
 And The Hero Appears 
 
 IT is dark as night at 6 A. M. in mid-De- 
 cember ; but by that time lights have 
 begun to shine here and there in dwell- 
 ing windows, for factory whistles blow at 
 seven. 
 
 As McGarigle came down Halsted Street, 
 though, swinging his night-stick, there were 
 few signs of dawning day. A light burned 
 behind the drawn blinds of Neeley's ; but the 
 doors were not yet unlocked. And Marti 
 nelli's was as it had been since one o'clock : 
 half-illumined, and the Italian cat-napping 
 behind his coffee-urn. 
 
 McGarigle stopped in front of Peggy's. 
 By her door was a wooden box with a pad- 
 lock. Carriers left her papers here on their 
 early-morning rounds ; and McGarigle tapped 
 the lock with his stick, making sure that it 
 was fast. 
 
 Then he strolled on to Martinelli's window, 
 where he rapped. 
 
 " Hey, Dago 1 " he called, sticking his head 
 18
 
 THE HERO APPEARS 19 
 
 in at the door. " Wake up ; er some wan'll 
 be stalein' a doughnut off ye." 
 
 Suddenly very wide awake, Martinelli 
 smiled as one who knew the improbability 
 of such a theft. 
 
 " You try," he invited significantly, and not 
 without a glint of subtle humour which Mc- 
 Garigle ignored. 
 
 Standing in front of his window and at a 
 right angle to it so as to catch the eyes of 
 passers up and down, Martinelli had a 
 double-faced sign with a legend whose main 
 purport was : 
 
 Coffee and 3 doughnut 50. 
 
 Coffee and 3 roll 50. 
 
 Coffee and piece of pie 50. 
 
 Hot Frankfurter Sandwich . . 50. 
 
 Hot Fried Egg Sandwich ... 50. 
 
 In a space above the legend hung three 
 cards reading, respectively, Breakfast, Lunch, 
 Supper. 
 
 Martinelli came out, now, and slipped the 
 Supper card from the top to the bottom of 
 the pile on each face of the board, so that 
 whether northbound or southbound, in his 
 haste or his unbroken leisure, his early-rising 
 or his late-returning, the passer-by might 
 know a new day was begun. 
 
 McGarigle watched this proceeding with
 
 20 277^ PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 an interest which years of familiarity with it 
 had increased rather than abated. 
 
 " I see Peggy 've got her new sign," he 
 observed, looking at it. 
 
 Martinelli smiled with an interest almost 
 proprietary. 
 
 " Got yeste'day," he said. 
 
 " ' News Emporium/ " laughed McGarigle, 
 reading it. " Ain't she the great wan ? I bet 
 she's proud ! I've known that kid since she 
 sold her first armful o' papers on this corner 
 whin she was six, an' looked three. That 
 was just after her pa took Frinch 1'ave be- 
 fore Petie was born. Say ! " McGarigle was 
 made reminiscent by the sign. " Them kids 
 an' their ma had tough pullin' to kape alive. 
 No wonder the mother give out. If ever a 
 hard-workin' woman starved to death, she 
 did. An' now here's that morsel of a Peg, 
 fatherin' an' motherin' the other two as fine's 
 you please, an' runnin' what she calls an 
 ' imporium ' 1 " 
 
 "Peggy run the street," said Martinelli, 
 proudly. 
 
 " Sure she does 1 Ain't she Irish ? Why 
 wouldn't she run a bunch o' Yiddishers an' 
 dagoes? Say ! Ye know ye' re obstructin' the 
 sidewalk wid that sign violatin' the ord'- 
 nance ! Five dollars fine if I rayport it."
 
 THE HERO APPEARS 21 
 
 Martinelli grinned. "A' right," he re- 
 plied ; and entered his shop where he drew 
 McGarigle a hot coffee and passed it out to 
 him with a plate of doughnuts. 
 
 Lights, meanwhile, had begun to glimmer 
 in Levinsky's ; and presently the door opened 
 and Levinsky came out. He might easily 
 have alarmed an uninitiated and nervous per- 
 son ; for he was dragging, rather savagely, 
 an unresisting gentleman wearing a bearskin 
 overcoat. McGarigle, gulping down his 
 coffee, watched with amusement the familiar 
 ceremony as Levinsky jerked the man un- 
 gently to his small black feet, and fastened to 
 the store-front with a padlock a chain which 
 came down through the sleeves of the fur 
 coat. Flapping on the breast of the endur- 
 ing one was a very dirty sign which read : 
 " Sale Price ! $9.93." 
 
 " H'lo, Solomon ! " the policeman called. 
 " Snow to-day ; maybe ye'll sell that coat." 
 
 Levinsky grunted unbelievingly. 
 
 "How many years you had it ? " 
 
 " Four." 
 
 " Motormen don't need 'em no more ; an' 
 tamesters can't be bothered wid 'em. What 
 y' ought to do is, take that up on the Nort' 
 Side an' label it ' Fer outdoor sPapin'.' It'd 
 sell quick I "
 
 22 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 Levinsky looked the scorn he felt for the 
 commercial sense of the Irish. 
 
 " Why don'd you go een beesness ? " he 
 asked, sarcastically. "You know so much 
 aboud ! " 
 
 McGarigle handed the cup back to Marti- 
 nelli and wiped his mouth with the back of 
 his hand. 
 
 "Ye' re violatin' the ord' nance wid that 
 dummy," he reminded. 
 
 Levinsky glared black hate, went into his 
 shop and almost instantly emerged with a 
 pair of shoe-laces which he thrust at Mc- 
 Garigle. 
 
 Martinelli, looking on interestedly, grinned ; 
 and McGarigle struggled to keep from doing 
 likewise. 
 
 " I told ye the las' time," he charged Le- 
 vinsky, " that I ain't no centypede." 
 
 " Save them an' go een beesness ! " Levin- 
 sky suggested, ironically ; " on the Nord 
 Side ! " 
 
 Then McGarigle remembered that he was 
 travelling a beat and resumed his journey. 
 
 He had been gone but a minute or two 
 when a young man came down Halsted 
 Street from the north, paused a moment as 
 if irresolute before Levinsky's, passed on to 
 Peggy's and, in evident disappointment to
 
 THE HERO APPEARS 23 
 
 find her stand empty, stepped to her shop 
 door and listened. Then he went into Mar- 
 tinelli's, and straddled a stool. 
 
 Martinelli looked surprised. " Early to- 
 day 1 " he commented, with a questioning in- 
 flection. 
 
 " Yes," answered the young man, in an 
 uncommunicative tone. 
 
 " Got job ? " the Italian pursued. 
 
 " No." 
 
 "You sleep yet," was Martinelli's' un- 
 offended conclusion, as he drew a cup of 
 coffee and passed it to the young man with a 
 plate of rolls minus butter or any substitute 
 for it. 
 
 The young man was a good-looking fel- 
 low, with the beauty of wholesome youth. 
 Even to the least-observing eye, he was no 
 product of Halsted Street, although not an 
 unfamiliar type there ; for fine, eager young 
 soldiers of fortune newly come from country 
 and small town to attack the city's strong- 
 holds of Opportunity not infrequently find 
 their first associations among the down-and- 
 outs ; there are no cheap lodgings which in- 
 vite " The Young and Hopeful Only." 
 
 As this young man is our hero, it may be 
 as well to say that he looked about four-and- 
 twenty ; that he was of an average height
 
 24 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 and build ; that his hair and eyes were 
 brown, his teeth and complexion exception- 
 ally fine, his clothes pretty good as to orig- 
 inal quality but showing signs of long wear, 
 and that the most significant thing about him 
 was none of the foregoing details but the 
 general air he carried an air of doggedness, 
 of being already at odds with the world, of 
 having lost faith in his power to win. 
 
 Now, having met the hero, you shall meet 
 Peggy 1
 
 Ill 
 
 In Which You Find Out Quite a Bit About 
 Peggy 
 
 A GAS jet flared suddenly in Peggy's 
 " imporium," the door opened, and 
 out into the dark and chill and snow 
 came a small boy, yawning prodigiously, 
 digging his knuckles into his reluctant-to- 
 open eyes, and otherwise expressing the 
 merest semi-awakeness. He bent to unlock 
 the box and get out his papers for delivery ; 
 and as by magic his lax, unenergetic little 
 form stiffened into electrified alertness. 
 
 "Tracks I" he whispered, mysteriously; 
 and got down to measure and differentiate 
 them with a wise eye the other was squinted 
 shut. " Tracks 1" 
 
 Peggy called him, but he did not hear. 
 When she came to the door he rose up and 
 faced her. 
 
 " There's been robbers here 1 " he said, 
 more delighted than distressed. "Two of 
 'em ! Look ! " He pointed to the foot- 
 prints in the snow. 
 
 " Are the papers gon' ? " Peggy cried in 
 alarm. 
 
 25
 
 26 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 As if that were, after all, of minor interest, 
 Petie tried the lock. It was fast. 
 
 "No," he replied indifferently. "But," 
 with renewed eagerness, "I b'leeve it was 
 on'y one robber, an' McGarigle chasm' him. 
 Them big feet is McGarigle' s " 
 
 "Petie!" cried Peggy, comically, as she 
 stooped to unlock the box. "I ruther be 
 robbed wanst in a while than scairt every 
 day wid yer sleuthin'. Here 1 " handing him 
 his papers. " Away wid ye an' maybe ye 
 kin ketch thim. In anny case, ye' re sure to 
 ketch McGarigle." 
 
 Muttering indignation because his science 
 was so little appreciated, Petie took himself 
 off on his delivery round. And when he was 
 gone, Peggy stood smiling after him a dear 
 little whimsical, wistful smile that was moth- 
 erly as with ages of experience, and childish 
 with teasing fun. 
 
 You want a picture of Peggy ? Well, she 
 was a wisp of a wee thing, turned eighteen 
 and tipping the butcher's scale at some 
 eighty-odd pounds. She stood four-feet-ten 
 in her Sunday shoes, and her tously hair was 
 nondescript but inclined to be reddish, while 
 her eyes were so full of dancing lights that 
 hardly any one could say what their colour 
 was. I'm not even sure that I know. Per-
 
 YOU MEET PEGGY 27 
 
 haps they were gray ; perhaps they were 
 blue. I can't swear for a certainty that they 
 may not have been hazel. The tiny hands 
 of Peg were red and roughened from expo- 
 sure and hard work ; and the baby-size fea- 
 ture which served her for a nose was lightly 
 powdered with pale-brown freckles. Her 
 mouth was merry and sweet, and her brogue 
 was rich and rolling what little schooling 
 she had snatched had not sufficed to make 
 her commonplace, even in her accent or her 
 idiom. She was wearing a plaid skirt the 
 originial hues of which were unguessable, 
 but its predominating tone at present was a 
 greenish brown ; the skirt flared about her 
 ankles, and had a bunchy fullness in the 
 back that suggested the services of a large 
 safety-pin. Her short, thick jacket was also 
 weather-worn as to colour and antiquated as 
 to style. And on her head Peggy wore a 
 close-fitting knitted cap such as small boys 
 often wear. 
 
 When Petie was out of sight she set briskly 
 to work to whisk her outdoor stand free of 
 snow. This stand was in the shelter of the 
 high "stoop," and from behind it Peggy 
 could hand papers to passers-by without 
 bringing them a step out of their hurrying 
 way. She kept her wares on it all day in
 
 28 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 good weather, and during the morning and 
 evening rush hours only when it was wet or 
 cold. 
 
 Almost at once, her neighbours stood 
 framed in their respective doorways. Peggy 
 saw Martinelli first. 
 
 "The top o' the mornin'!" she called to 
 him, cheerily. 
 
 " Night, yed ! " observed Levinsky from 
 beside the bearskin coat. 
 
 " Mornin' when you come," said Martinelli 
 to Peggy, with Latin gallantry. 
 
 " An* a cold day," Peggy retorted, laying 
 out her papers, " whin you can't throw a bo- 
 kay. Have you thro wed wan at Levinsky ? " 
 
 Martinelli grinned. 
 
 " Come, now," Peggy demanded of Levin- 
 sky. " Where's me smile to begin the day 
 wid?" 
 
 Levinsky smiled wanly; the attempt 
 seemed honest ; but any less of a smile 
 would have been no smile at all. 
 
 " G'wan ! " Peggy cried mirthfully. 
 " Stretch yer face, Solomon ! Make it a 
 good wan, er ye'll fergit how. Sure, it's 
 the on'y practice ye give yerself. I'm gittin' 
 discour'ged wid you. Honest, I am ! " 
 
 " Bad times," he murmured, shaking his 
 grizzled head.
 
 YOU MEET PEGGY 29 
 
 " On'y wan way to make 'em better," she 
 retorted. "Times that's bad fer makin' 
 money is sure to be grand fer givin' it away." 
 
 But at the introduction of so idle a theme, 
 Levinsky remembered that he had obliga- 
 tions within doors. 
 
 Peggy was gazing proudly up at her new 
 sign when the young man, having hastily 
 finished his coffee and rolls, came out of 
 Martinelli's. 
 
 " Are you late or early ? " she laughed ; 
 but there was a telltale self-consciousness in 
 her manner. 
 
 " Early," he replied ; and putting his hand 
 in a pocket produced a copper which he laid 
 on the stand and helped himself to a paper. 
 
 " You must have lost somethin' yeste'day," 
 Peggy hazarded, "by gittin' to it five min- 
 utes late." 
 
 " I didn't get that close to anything," he 
 answered ; and seemed about to go not be- 
 cause he wanted to, but because he was 
 ashamed of his " blues." 
 
 Peggy tugged at his sleeve, wistfully. 
 " Kin ye spare it? " she asked. 
 
 He knew she meant the penny ; but he 
 pretended not to understand. " What do 
 you mean?" he said stiffly. 
 
 Peggy was not easily rebuffed ; she seemed
 
 30 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 to realize that human need must make its 
 brief little last stand behind pride before it 
 opens the heart's door to sympathy. 
 
 " All right," she replied quickly, as if turn- 
 ing it off. " On'y, a cent's a good dale, 
 sometimes, jest fer to look in a paper whin 
 ye're huntin' a job. An' I don' mind." 
 
 "Mind what?" 
 
 " Mind if ye look an' don' pay. It don't 
 hurt the paper none." 
 
 "I shouldn't think that was very good 
 business for you," he observed, impersonally. 
 
 Peggy laughed. " I don't nade all the 
 money in the world to make me happy. 
 An' I seem to git on. I always tear the 
 Help Wanteds out o' wan paper, night an' 
 mornin', an' kape 'em here to be looked 
 at widout pay. At first I used to put by a 
 paper fer it. But I don't have to : there's 
 always some customer that I kin ask, ' D ' ye 
 nade a job?' An' whin they say, 'No,' I 
 give thim the paper wid all thim onnecessary 
 jobs left out. They'd on'y throw that part 
 away. An' I hate to think o' that. So manny 
 people waste, every day, what other folks 
 want awful bad. Seems like there ought 
 to be better management." 
 
 "I wish you could take your ideas and 
 work them out in some of the great big ways
 
 YOU MEET PEGGY 31 
 
 they're needed," he commented, with a 
 warmth that was not impersonal. 
 
 Peggy shook her head. " Not me ! " she 
 declared. " I got as much as I kin do to 
 kape 'em goin' right here. An' I guess that 
 maybe if everybody'd git busy wid thim ideas 
 on his own job, instead o' thinkin' how grand 
 he could use 'em if his job was bigger, it'd 
 help consid'rable." 
 
 " You bet it would I " he cried. " I wish 
 they could all know you. Then they'd be 
 ashamed not to try ! " 
 
 " Well, that's beyond you or me," she an- 
 swered. "What ain't beyond us is the way 
 I manage on my job, an' the way you man- 
 age on yours. Now, Pave us take a look at 
 thim Help Wanteds, before me Jrade gits 
 brisk." 
 
 She tore the Want Ad. section from one of 
 her Tribunes, and spread it open on her stand. 
 
 " Help Wanted : Male," she murmured. 
 " Now, let's see ; I don' belave I know what 
 kind of a job you was lookin' fer." 
 
 He had bought papers from her rather reg- 
 ularly for the past fortnight or so since his 
 dwindling funds had driven him to Marti- 
 nelli's counter for scant sustenance in the place 
 of meals ; but this was the first time he had 
 found Peggy alone for more than a moment
 
 32 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 at a time. So, although she knew he was 
 hunting a job, and that he was a newcomer 
 to the city, that was the sum of all about him 
 that she did know. 
 
 " I was looking," he answered, " for a 
 place as accountant bookkeeper. But what 
 I'll probably get is a nice soft job with a. pick. 
 That's why I'm on the hunt so early. I've 
 quit looking for what I want. It's got to be 
 what I can get, now." 
 
 " Well," Peggy answered, thoughtfully ; 
 " sure I think a job wid a pick's a lot better 
 'n no job at all. But this is kind o' bad 
 weather fer picks. Why don't ye try wan 
 more day before ye give up ? Think how 
 manny smart people has died since yister- 
 day 1 Think how manny folks is wonderin' 
 how they're to git on at all widout the ones 
 that's gon' ; an' here's you, that could help 
 'em, goin' to work wid a pick ! Ain't it a 
 pity there's no better ways o' people that 
 nade each other findin' each other out? 
 There was that girl in las' night's paper that 
 drowned herself in the lake yisterday be- 
 cause she couldn' git work. An' lots, whin 
 they heard it, said they'd of been glad to git 
 her. That made me feel awful. Now, 1'ave 
 us see. Maybe this's your lucky day." 
 
 She turned to the Ad. section and when
 
 YOU MEET PEGGY 33 
 
 she had found the column with bookkeepers 
 in, she began to read : 
 
 " ' Wanted : By large mercantile house, 
 young man wid brains ' there you are I Or, 
 here ' Wanted : Good-appearing young 
 man' " she laughed and shook her head 
 " ' to sell stock.' ' Wanted : Industrious 
 young man' I suppose ye' re industrious?" 
 
 He nodded. 
 
 " ' Fer cashier's department ; must have un- 
 quistionable riputation and riferences.' " 
 
 " That lets mejDut," he said, bitterly. 
 
 Peggy straightened up with a little gasp 
 as of hurt. Then, " I don't know what ye 
 mane," she said slowly, but with conviction ; 
 " but I don' belave you ever done annything 
 that wasn* square." 
 
 The young man turned his head away for 
 a moment ; his mouth was quivering and he 
 did not want her to see. 
 
 " I didn't," he answered, unsteadily. 
 " And neither did my dad. But he's suffer- 
 ing and so am I. He's in prison ; for em- 
 bezzling from a bank he was cashier of. It 
 was the president that was crooked dad 
 was a cat's-paw and he didn't even know. 
 But the president knew how to dig himself 
 out of the mess and he did. Somebody had 
 to suffer so dad "
 
 34 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 "An' ye couldn' do a thing?" Peggy 
 cried, indignantly. 
 
 "Not a thing 1 The president had the 
 biggest creditor behind him. We appealed 
 to this man but he wouldn't answer. He's 
 here, in Chicago. I came here to try to see 
 him. But I couldn't get near him ! When 
 I'd been to his place a dozen times, they 
 threatened to arrest me if I came again. I 
 wrote him some letters, then, and told him 
 what I thought of him and that it'd be my 
 joy in life to see him get what's coming to 
 him. But I don't suppose he ever even saw 
 the letters ! " 
 
 " You wouldn' think there could be a man 
 that mane," Peggy declared. 
 
 "You don't know how heartless money 
 makes men," he retorted. "Those million- 
 aires have no heart in them. How could 
 they? If they had hearts of pity, or con- 
 sciences, they couldn't be millionaires ! " 
 
 " Oh, I don' know," Peggy demurred. 
 " Some of 'em does lots o' good " 
 
 "Aw!" he cried, desperately, "what does 
 it amount to ? A drop in the bucket ! They 
 don't miss it, and how many does it help ? 
 If they did even half what they could, the 
 world would be a different place to live in." 
 
 "Sure that's true of more than million-
 
 YO U MEET PEGG Y 35 
 
 aires," observed Peggy, sagely. " But every- 
 body wants to put it up to Mr. Carneejie. 
 Whatd'jo* do?" 
 
 He laughed, bitterly. " Me ? What could 
 /do? I'm broke!" 
 
 "Ye've got that cent I didn't 1'ave ye 
 spend fer a paper," she reminded. 
 
 He thought she was jesting. " What could 
 I do with a cent ? " 
 
 " Did ye ever try ? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 "Well, ye've a lot to learn. I usen't to 
 know, nayther. But wan day I seen a little 
 piece in the paper about iverybody wantin' 
 to be rich so they could do more good ; but 
 nobody ought to think how much good he'd 
 do wid a lot o' money that wasn't sure he 
 was doin' the most he could wid what he's 
 got. ' I bet that manes me/ I said to meself. 
 I couldn* give much, but whin I got to fig- 
 gerin' I seen that I could give a cint a day. 
 So I give wan, rain er shine. O' course, the 
 cent don't do much it's what comes o' 
 lookin' fer some wan, each day, that nades 
 you an' the little you kin do. Try it to-day, 
 an' see. And now let's git back to huntin' 
 a job wan wheer they kin tell by lookin' at 
 ye the kind of a fella ye are."
 
 IV 
 
 In Which the Hero Gets a Job 
 
 SO absorbed was Peggy in what the 
 Ads. offered that she did not hear an 
 auto horn honk sharply, nor look up 
 until called by name. Then she started 
 guiltily. Confronting her, amusement 
 twinkling in his deep-set small blue eyes, 
 was a large-framed, heavily-built man of 
 about sixty-five a man who expressed au- 
 thority in his every line and movement. 
 
 " ' News Emporium/ " he said, reading 
 the sign above Peggy's head. " This place 
 looks to me more like a reading room. 
 Nothing for sale, I suppose ? " 
 
 " I'm sorry," Peggy apologized. " I didn' 
 hear you. We was huntin' a job." 
 
 "Who for?" 
 
 " Fer me friend, here." 
 
 The older man turned to the young one. 
 " What can you do ? " he asked. The joking 
 familiarity of his tone in speaking to Peggy 
 changed sharply when he addressed the boy. 
 This was a man who, in his dealings with all 
 the world, stood almost defiantly on the 
 36
 
 77/2? HERO GETS A JOB 37 
 
 ground where he demanded that they show 
 him reason why he should consider their ex- 
 istence. 
 
 " I'm an accountant," the youth answered. 
 "I've had most of my experience in a bank. 
 But I'm willing to do anything." 
 
 The older man looked him over and, it 
 seemed, through and through shrewdly. 
 " Expert accountants need not be ' willing to 
 do anything, '"he observed, dryly. " And 
 they don't usually look for work on Halsted 
 Street." 
 
 The boy flushed. " I'm not expert," he 
 said. " I live over here because it is cheap. 
 And I've got to be willing to do anything." 
 
 As if he had not even heard the boy's de- 
 fense, the man continued, looking him in the 
 eye : " It isn't drink." He was not ques- 
 tioning ; he was announcing his own conclu- 
 sions which were seldom at fault ; so seldom 
 that he was what he was : a commander of 
 men. 
 
 " No, sir," the youth declared, curtly. 
 
 " Nor dope," the examiner continued, still 
 speaking as to himself. " Dishonesty ? Hm ! 
 Do you stand for him, Peggy ? " 
 
 " Sure I do ! " she cried. 
 
 " She doesn't know anything about me," 
 the boy interposed, " except what I've told
 
 38 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 her and that isn't much. I've never ex- 
 changed a dozen sentences with her until 
 just now." 
 
 The man made a fumbling motion as if to 
 feel in his pockets for card and pencil ; but 
 his overcoat was buttoned. He was not one 
 to waste energy. 
 
 " Give me a piece of paper and a pencil, 
 Peggy," he commanded. 
 
 Peggy tore a strip of margin from the 
 Help Wanted sheet ; the youth supplied a 
 pencil with which the man made a few 
 scrawls. 
 
 " Take this out to the head bookkeeper's 
 office at my plant about eight o'clock," he 
 said, handing the strip of paper to the boy. 
 " No use going earlier I'm the only person 
 that gets there as early as this. Now, 
 Peggy, where are my papers ? " 
 
 There was that in the man's tone which 
 dismissed the boy more effectually than 
 many another could have done it with sharp- 
 spoken command. 
 
 " I thank you, sir," the boy began. But 
 the man made a gesture of impatience. 
 
 When the youth was out of ear-shot, 
 though, Peggy spoke for him and for her- 
 self. She had been watching the transaction 
 intently, little disturbed or distracted by her
 
 THE HERO GETS A JOB 39 
 
 few earliest customers who threw their cop- 
 pers on her stand and snatched up the 
 papers they wanted. 
 
 " I guess," she observed, sagely, " ye have 
 yer own fun after all." 
 
 He knew what she meant, and smiled. 
 One of the things about Peggy that had 
 kept this man her delighted customer since 
 she had been in business kept him coming 
 to her whenever he could for his papers, not 
 at all in a benevolent spirit, but because she 
 amused and interested him was her com- 
 plete absence of undue regard for his wealth. 
 There were not many persons in the world 
 whose feeling for him had nothing whatever 
 to do with his power ; this child was one of 
 the few. Sometimes he inclined to think she 
 was the only one he knew. When his soul 
 was sour with sycophancy, he thought of 
 Peggy as a stifling man thinks of a cool 
 -breeze : of Peggy, to whom no one was 
 anything except as she saw him, and who 
 had a frank, merry preference for her own 
 life as compared with what she surmised his 
 to be. 
 
 " Don't stop feeling sorry for me," he 
 answered. " I don't have half as much as 
 you do. You think it's fun for me to be 
 able to scratch a few words on a bit of paper
 
 40 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 and give a fellow what he wants. Isn't that 
 it?" 
 
 She nodded. 
 
 " I used to think it would be a great feel- 
 ing when I was chasing it ; but hardly any- 
 thing's a great feeling when you've caught 
 up with it, Peg." 
 
 She laughed up at him roguishly. "Then 
 why d' ye run so hard ? " she teased. 
 
 Why, indeed ? He shook his head. " It 
 gets to be a habit," he said, more to himself, 
 reflectively, than, in explanation to her. 
 " Like automobile speeding : you don't care 
 about being at any place but you want to 
 get there quick." 
 
 " I know," she agreed, gravely. " That's 
 why I sold me car." 
 
 He chuckled with appreciation of her droll- 
 ery. " Never let anything interfere with your 
 enjoyment of life ; do you, Peg ? How's the 
 penny philanthropy coming on ? " 
 
 " Fine 1 Why don't ye try it ? " 
 
 Smiling, he shook his head. " I couldn't 
 make it work. But I'll tell you what I 
 thought of : I'll give you a dollar a day to 
 give for me." 
 
 "What d' ye want to do that fer?" she 
 demanded. "What good'll that be doin 1 
 you?"
 
 THE HERO GETS A JOB 41 
 
 " Why, I'd have the fun of knowing what 
 a lot of good you were doing with it." 
 
 She laughed. " I've read in the papers 
 that ye're dippy about secon'-hand stuff," she 
 teased, referring to his mania for antiques ; 
 " but, Ian' sakes ! I didn' know you liked 
 aven your fun secon'-hand. Why don't ye 
 give it yerself ? " 
 
 " Because you know how so much better 
 than I do," he retorted. 
 
 " Thafs all right," she admitted ; " but I 
 couldn' undertake it. 'Tis a rale raysponsi- 
 bility to give away a cint a day, an' give it 
 right. I couldn' tackle a dollar. Why, all 
 the con games on the West Side'd be after 
 me, if they knew I had that much money. 
 I'd have to kape a private seckeratary an' I 
 don't keer fer them, knowin' all yer business. 
 I don' suppose annybody ever asks you fer a 
 dollar do they ? " 
 
 " Hardly ever. Usually for a college or a 
 hospital or a library, or else for a chicken 
 farm or a parlour organ or a musical educa- 
 tion." 
 
 " An* you tell yer seckeratary to send 'em 
 the college er else write 'em that yer supply 
 o' parlour organs has gave out ? " 
 
 " That's it. I believe you used to do that 
 way yourself you seem to know it so well."
 
 42 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 " I did," she answered, unsmilingly ; " an' 
 sure, 'tis no fun at all. Go on wid it, if ye 
 gotta kape that seckeratary busy. But why 
 don' ye try the other, too ? I'll help ye all I 
 kin ; on'y ye gotta swear to give it every 
 day. If ye chate by givin' siven dollars 
 wanst a wake, it's all off betwane us." 
 
 "I'll try it for a week ; and I won't cheat. 
 Now I must get along. My little girl is home, 
 and I'm going to send her in to see you 
 maybe this morning ; she's coming down, 
 presently, to pick me up at the Works and 
 take me down-town." 
 
 " This's me day at home," Peggy said. 
 
 He turned to go back to his car. A man 
 who had come out of Neeley's a moment 
 before, and had been standing, as if waiting, 
 in front of Martinelli's door, stepped up and 
 spoke in a low tone, but quickly : 
 
 " Beg pardon, sir." 
 
 " Well ? " 
 
 " You're Mr. Kimbalton ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " I'm one of Burns' men. May I speak to 
 you a moment inside ? " 
 
 " Come into the news shop." 
 
 Peggy's morning trade was not nearly so 
 brisk as that she did in the evening : busy 
 people slept late and left a narrow margin of
 
 THE HERO GETS A JOB 43 
 
 time between bed and bench too narrow for 
 reading the paper. By and by the idlers 
 would come crawling forth, sated with sleep 
 and looking for such diversion without exer- 
 tion as the day's news might afford. But 
 unless there was some criminal case of ex- 
 treme local interest, the morning trade was 
 hardly sufficient to get Peggy up so early 
 were it not that Petie had to be started on his 
 round. 
 
 She was hopping from foot to foot in the 
 effort to keep warm, when her young man 
 reappeared. 
 
 " Has he gone?" 
 
 She nodded towards her shop. " He's in 
 there talkin' to a man. I'm afraid he's got 
 trouble at the Works." 
 
 " Trouble ? " 
 
 " Yes ; ain't ye read about it ? " 
 
 " I don't know who he is that's what I 
 came back to find out. I guess he thinks 
 everybody knows him. And I can't make 
 anything of this scrawl except ' Give this 
 young man a chance. O. K.' " 
 
 Peggy looked at the paper he handed her. 
 " Not O. K.," she laughed ; "A. K. Andrew 
 Kimbalton." 
 
 The youth stared. "Was that Kimbal- 
 ton?"
 
 44 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Let's have another look at those Help 
 Wanteds," he observed, dryly. " Kimbalton 
 is the man I was telling you about." 
 
 Peggy gasped. " Lan' sakes ! Well, 
 here's yer chance to git yer case before him." 
 
 " That job' 11 last about one minute, when 
 he finds out who I am." 
 
 " I don' belave that ; but, annyway, ye 
 don' nade to fire ye* self. " 
 
 " I wish I hadn't written him those bitter 
 letters," the boy sighed, regretfully. " But 
 maybe he didn't see them ; maybe this is 
 my chance. Anyway, I'm going to try for 
 dad's sake and for yours/" 
 
 Peggy's usual ready answer did not come 
 to this. There was something about this 
 youth that made her self-conscious, shy. She 
 was glad that Mr. Kimbalton's reappearance 
 saved her the necessity of a reply. 
 
 Kimbalton seemed pleased to see the youth 
 as if his being there were opportune. 
 
 " Young man," he said, " do you know 
 your way about the city ? " 
 
 " I can find it, sir." 
 
 " Then take this note to that address. If 
 the man isn't there, wait for him. Bring the 
 answer back here to Peggy's shop." 
 
 " Yes, sir."
 
 THE HERO GETS A JOB 45 
 
 The directions were explicit. The boy 
 took the note, raised his hat deferentially, and 
 hurried away. 
 
 "Thanks for your hospitality, Peggy," 
 Kimbalton said, with a preoccupied air. 
 " And you won't mind, will you, if some one 
 comes here for the answer to that note ? " 
 
 "Not at all. I hope things ain't gittin' 
 bad ? " 
 
 " Nothing to think about only some 
 folks can't seem to realize that I run my own 
 business. By the way, what is that young 
 man's name ? " 
 
 " I'll never tell ye," Peggy laughed ; " be- 
 cause I don't know it meself."
 
 In Which Peggy Rescues a Crumpled Note 
 
 ABOUT six-thirty, or twenty minutes 
 to seven, the factory girls began to 
 hurry by. Nearly always they were 
 sleepy, and winter mornings they were cold. 
 Few of them were dressed warmly, and not 
 a few were breakfastless. Some stopped at 
 Martinelli's long enough to swallow a cup of 
 coffee. Some bought a nickel's worth of 
 bananas from a push-cart, and ate them as 
 they went. Only those who had no job 
 lingered for speech with Peggy and for a 
 look at her free Help Wanteds ; the others 
 hurried past. But Peggy, who knew most 
 of them and their interests, had a way of 
 calling out as they passed any news item she 
 thought they would be glad to hear, or any 
 little bit of personal chaff that might amuse 
 them. 
 
 " Here y' are ! " she cried, as she caught 
 sight of two girls who had spent the evening 
 before in her shop and had discussed with 
 interest one of the day's stories. " Here y' 
 are 1 All about the elopin' hairess and the 
 46
 
 A CRUMPLED NOTE 47 
 
 chowfear. Her pa ain't caught thim yet. 
 Hello, Katie ! I bet ye're in to-day. Did ye 
 ever," to Levinsky who had reappeared in 
 his doorway, " know Katie's a writer fer the 
 Tribune ? Sure she is ! She has somethin' 
 in Laura Jean's Bleedin' Heart Colyum 
 a' most every day. Oh, say, Ida I " to a 
 swarthy Jewish girl, " Lillian Russell's got a 
 swell wan this mornin' : How to be a beauti- 
 ful blonde, though born a brunette just think 
 elevatin' thoughts ! " 
 
 As the latest ones scurrie4 past, Peggy be- 
 gan to be conscious of her hungriness. 
 
 " Polly ! " she called, stepping to the shop- 
 door, " I'm starvin'. Have ye got the coffee 
 on?" 
 
 There was no immediate response ; but in 
 a few moments Polly came to the door. She 
 had on a dress-skirt, but clutched with one 
 hand a jacket about her shoulders, as if she 
 were not fully dressed. In the other hand 
 she held a creased black taffeta ribbon. 
 
 Polly was sixteen, and quite pretty in a 
 meaningless sort of way. She was larger 
 than Peggy; her hair was a rich, chestnut 
 brown ; her eyes were decidedly blue ; and 
 her features were regular. But her expres- 
 sion was petulant ; traces of frequent sullen- 
 ness lurked in the droop of her eyelids and of
 
 48 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 the corners of her mouth. Polly was Peggy's 
 idol, and that speaks for itself. 
 
 " I simply can't tie this nasty old string 
 into a decent bow any more," she said, fret- 
 fully. 
 
 Peggy looked critically at the offending 
 ribbon. " Couldn' ye iron it ? " she sug- 
 gested. 
 
 " Iron ! " cried Polly, explosively. " Why, 
 it's ironed to death now. That's what's the 
 matter with it. And it's a measly little old 
 string, anyhow ! I'll bet it's the littlest one 
 on any girl in high school." 
 
 " I'm sorry, lovey," Peggy crooned, sym- 
 pathetically. " But you study hard, an' 1'arn 
 a lot ; an' whin ye git to earnin' big wages 
 wid all yer iducation, ye kin buy yerself bows 
 that'll make ye look like an avvyation meet 
 er the Wright Brothers come to town." 
 
 "I wish I was workin' now," Polly de- 
 clared. "I'm sick o' school. An* I don't 
 see what good all that x plus y stuff is goin' 
 to do me." 
 
 " Well, never havin' 1'arned anny of it," 
 Peggy went on, " I can't say. But I know 
 there ain't much kin be done widout it. An' 
 I want you to git on, Polly darlin'. Ye 
 wouldn' wish to be like me would you? 
 Ign'rant an' showin' it in every word I say."
 
 A CRUMPLED NOTE 49 
 
 " No, I wouldn't," Polly admitted, frankly. 
 " And if you tried, and cared, you could talk 
 without bein' so Irish too ! " 
 
 Peggy smiled, wistfully. Until now she 
 had never minded her brogue. But "an ac- 
 countant" one who, doubtless, knew much 
 of x plus y, whatever that might be would 
 think scornfully, of course, of one with her 
 uncouth speech. 
 
 "I'll be after tryin' harder," she promised. 
 " But do put on the coffee, darlin' I'm 
 passin' away wid hunger an' cold." 
 
 Polly obeyed, moving slowly and as if 
 deeply bored. And Peggy sat down on the 
 stool by her outdoor stand and huddled over 
 a copy of one of the morning papers. She 
 was absorbed in some dramatic incident it 
 told, when the front door at the top of the 
 " stoop " opened, and a girl came out, fol- 
 lowed by sounds of angry altercation. 
 
 " All right ! " the girl called back. " That'll 
 do. You ain't going to lose any more on 
 me." And she came down the steps, hug- 
 ging the 'far edge as if to avoid observation 
 from Peggy's corner. Reaching the foot, 
 she started past, walking quickly. But be- 
 fore she had gone more than a few steps, 
 Peggy called to her : 
 
 " What's yer hurry ? "
 
 50 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 Without stopping, the girl called back : 
 " NothinV 
 
 t "Don't ye want to look at the Help 
 Wanteds?" 
 
 This girl lodger in one of the tenements 
 above had been stopping regularly, of late, 
 to avail herself of Peggy's free list in her 
 hunt for work. 
 
 " No thanks," she answered. 
 
 "Oh!" cried Peggy, delightedly; "did 
 ye git somethin' ? " 
 
 " No. But I got to go." 
 
 " All right ! " Peggy replied, cheerfully. 
 " Excuse me fer rubberin*. I just thought 
 that maybe, if you wasn't in a hurry, you'd 
 do me a favour." 
 
 " I'd like to," the girl murmured ; " but 
 
 " Never mind ! " Peggy cried. " I had me 
 nerve to ask." 
 
 " Why, no you hadn't I " the girl declared. 
 " After all the favours you've done me. I'd 
 like to what was it you wanted ? " 
 
 " Jest to know if you'd mind settin' here 
 while I snatch a cup o' coffee. Polly's 
 makin' it." 
 
 The girl hesitated and yielded. " Sure I 
 could ! I'd like to pay some o' my debts." 
 
 " This ain't payin' debts," Peggy demurred.
 
 A CRUMPLED NOTE 51 
 
 " This's makin' wan for me. There ain't 
 likely to be anny wan comin' by, but if ye'll 
 just kape yer eye on me stock ye ain't had 
 breakfast yet, have ye ? " 
 
 The girl turned away sharply. " I see," 
 she said. " I might have known it was that. 
 No, thanks. I'm out of a job ; but I ain't 
 takin' charity." 
 
 " Oh, go on ! " Peggy cried. " I do nade 
 the stall minded ; an' if I didn't I'd on'y be 
 doin' what you'd do fer me if things was the 
 other way about. Lan' sakes ! manny's the 
 cup o' good hot tea I've had give to me in 
 this very store in the days whin I peddled 
 on the corner, an' got stiff wid the cold, an' 
 the cobbler's wife used to bring me in an* 
 thaw me out God rist her soul ! It'd be a 
 pity if I couldn't hand on the complymint. 
 Set down, lovey ! I won't be gone more'n 
 a minute. An' while ye' re mindin' the impo- 
 rium, ye kin be radein' annything ye see. 
 Rade about that poor girl that took herself 
 off, thinkin' there was no wan to help her ; an* 
 all the time the town was full o' thim that'd 
 been glad enough to do it if they'd on'y 
 known." 
 
 " That's what they always say," the girl 
 retorted, bitterly, " when they're sure there 
 ain't no danger anybody'll call their bluff."
 
 52 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 " Oh, pshaw ! "_ Peggy remonstrated. 
 "There's heaps of folks that want to be 
 kind on'y they don't know how. You don't 
 want to git to thinkin' that there ain't like 
 she did, poor thing 1 You know what I can't 
 ever help thinkin' whin I rade things like 
 that ? That if them that goes like her, you 
 know had on'y just of waited ever so little 
 longer, they wouldn't have done it. If they 
 could on'y of had some wan to talk things 
 over wid some wan that wouldn' ack crazy, 
 but'd understand." 
 
 The girl sneered. " A grand chance ! 
 Where would you find anybody like that ? " 
 
 Peggy looked thoughtful. " Why, there' d 
 be some wan, surely," she said, slowly. 
 
 " Well, who ? Who'd you go to before 
 you'd do it ? " 
 
 Peggy was unable to answer. 
 
 "That's it!" the girl went on. "There 
 airit any one! There ain't nobody alive, 
 that I ever heard of, whose love of hard- 
 pressed folks you could be sure enough of to 
 go to 'em and say you was in despair. Ain't 
 it queer that, with all the millions and mil- 
 lions some people give to charity, there 
 wouldn't be any one that'd give just love 
 enough love so no one could ever doubt it ? " 
 
 " My Ian' ! " cried Peggy, her eyes shining
 
 A CRUMPLED NOTE 53 
 
 with the vision she was seeing. " Wouldn' 
 that be a wonderful thing fer some wan to 
 be ? You ought to tell that to everybody ye 
 meet, till ye see can't you maybe find the 
 wan that'll try to be it. An' while ye' re 
 lookin' fer that wan, Alma dear, if you should 
 hear of anny girl that's thinkin* of givin' 
 up the fight wan way or the other won't 
 ye beg her not to do it till she's come to me. 
 I dunno what I kin do I'm so little an' ig- 
 norunt but I could win' my arms around 
 her like this " she threw her arms about 
 Alma, who was crying in long, shuddering 
 sobs, and held her tight " an' beg her to try 
 just wanst more fer my sake. Because it 
 might be me that was meant to help her, an' 
 I must have me chanst." 
 
 Peggy knew by the way the girl clutched 
 her that she was getting her chance. The 
 crumpled note that was thrust into her hand 
 only confirmed what she had divined : it was 
 the note that was to have been found after- 
 wards ! 
 
 Peggy had fought hard for that note : her 
 every sense was trained to the signs of des- 
 pondency, and she knew almost to a cer- 
 tainty when it had reached its last ditch. 
 She was a fair spent little victor when she 
 ran in to bring a cup of coffee out to Alma
 
 54 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 who insisted with a bravery Peggy was far 
 too wise not to respect on keeping to her 
 promise and minding the stall while Peggy 
 ate ; even though she knew, now, the loving 
 subterfuge this plea had been.
 
 VI 
 
 In Which the Plot Thickens 
 
 IT was nearing ten o'clock. Polly and 
 Petie were in school and Alma was 
 asleep in Peggy's bed where she had 
 been persuaded to lie down and rest before 
 going after the job Peggy was so sure was 
 awaiting her. Peggy was sitting inside her 
 wee shop, for purchasers who came late in 
 the day were not in a hurry and so not averse 
 to coming into the " imporium." 
 
 A big limousine stopped at the curb, and 
 a young girl got out. She was a sweet, win- 
 some-looking girl, probably twenty-one years 
 old, and simply dressed in a dark blue serge 
 suit and a jaunty little high-crowned hat of 
 black beaver, untrimmed except with a stiff 
 little grosgrain ribbon bow. 
 
 She was Anne Kimbalton, the motherless 
 only child of Andrew Kimbalton who had 
 married in his late forties after a long bache- 
 lorhood of devotion to business and to his 
 widowed mother and to the collection of an- 
 tiques. 
 
 The girl had been away from Chicago most 
 55
 
 56 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 of her life : winters in kindlier climes, schools 
 in the East, long tours in Europe. Realiza- 
 tion of her father's loneliness and of his need 
 of her had come to her only recently with 
 the deepening of her nature from child to 
 woman by the sorrow of her mother's death 
 and the poignant hurt of a love affair whose 
 hero had turned out to be a caddish fortune- 
 hunter. She was trying, now, to make up 
 for long, lost years, by entering into her fa- 
 ther's life in the fullest possible companion- 
 ship. And he, rather sorry than otherwise for 
 his girl in view of the burden of wealth to 
 devolve upon her, and hopeful that she might 
 be better equipped than he for giving it 
 away, was trying to give her what training 
 he could in the handling of great affairs. 
 
 Many civilizations had lent their gentlest 
 graces to the girl, but the prettiest manners 
 she had were those that no training can give ; 
 they came from a heart sincerely without pat- 
 ronage. Nor would the miracle of this ever 
 be explicable. Some people are born with 
 that great gift. I doubt if it is ever acquired. 
 
 "Father telephoned to me," Anne Kim- 
 balton explained to Peggy when she had told 
 who she was, " and asked me to meet him 
 here instead of going down to the Works. 
 He says you've got him started on a dollar-
 
 THE PLOT THICKENS 57 
 
 a-day scheme, and that I'd better ask you 
 about it and see if I can't try it too. But, 
 dear me ! I'm too timid to walk up to peo- 
 ple and hand them a dollar for fear they 
 say : ' How dare you ! ' 
 
 Peggy laughed hilariously. " How funny 
 ye are ! " she cried wiping her eyes. " I kin 
 see ye now, in me min's eye, handin' yer dol- 
 lar to Mrs. Hetty Grane. On'y I kin see her 
 takin' it 1 " 
 
 There was no superiority in her laughter ; 
 just an overflowing mirthfulness in which 
 Anne Kimbalton could not help joining till 
 her eyes, too, were tear-wet ; for Peggy mim- 
 icked excruciatingly what she thought 
 might be the pleased manner of Mrs. Green. 
 
 " It's a shame," she gasped, when she 
 could command speech at all, " to make fun 
 o' you like that an' you wid such swate in- 
 tintions. But, Ian' sakes, lovey ! that ain't no 
 way to do." 
 
 " I know it isn't," Anne replied, humbly. 
 " But how am / to find people who need a 
 dollar?" 
 
 "Why d' ye begin so extra vagint?" 
 Peggy demanded. "Why don't ye start wid 
 a pinny ? " 
 
 " Oh, how would that look ? And we with 
 so much," Anne remonstrated.
 
 58 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 " Never min' ! If ye've get much money, 
 ye ain't got much sinse I mane of that 
 pertic'lar kind. If I was you I wouldn' try 
 givin' away dollars until I'd 1'arned all there 
 is to know about givin' away cints. Nobody 
 ought to. That's the rayson so manny folks 
 makes failures o' their philant'ropy : they 
 begin late, an' sudden, an' they want to 
 begin big. Ye can't. Now, you start wid a 
 pinny, dear. 'Tis enough raysponsibility fer 
 you at prisint. People that nade a pinny 's 
 more approachable ye kin fin' out more 
 about thim. Then mebbe ye kin see where 
 ye could spind a dollar." 
 
 " Would you let me come here, sometimes, 
 and see what you do with your pennies? 
 I'm sure I shouldn't know how to begin." 
 
 " Sure ye kin come ! Come anny time ye 
 like." 
 
 " What's a good time to come? " 
 
 Peggy considered. " Well, avenin's is the 
 best fer me ; but afternoons is pritty good, 
 too ; an', I mus' say, mornin's ain't to be 
 sneezed at. I guess it's like this : there ain't 
 no time o' day er night whin ye can't fin' 
 some wan that nades ye if ye know where 
 to look. But git out o' that thing," pointing 
 to the limousine, " a block off ; er ye'll niver 
 git on at all wid yer pinny."
 
 THE PLOT THICKENS 59 
 
 " I will," Anne promised, eagerly. 
 
 " My goodness ! " Peggy declared, laugh- 
 ing. "Tis the grand adopter I'm gittin' 
 to be : ye're the secon' wan I've took under 
 me wing this mornin' 1 Maybe I ought to 
 tell you a little about the other wan : she was 
 discouraged." 
 
 Peggy felt in her jacket pockets and 
 brought out the crumpled note. " Rade 
 that," she said. 
 
 Anne took in its brief message at a glance. 
 "Where did you get it?" she asked, in an 
 awed tone. 
 
 Peggy told her, speaking low, so that by 
 no chance might Alma overhear ; and Anne 
 listened, breathlessly. She had read moving 
 things, and cried over them as people must 
 when they are too remote from real life to 
 feel its clutch upon their hearts. But this ! 
 This girl that but for sweet Peggy would 
 now have been a bit of drift on the bleak 
 lakeshore or in the ghastly morgue this girl 
 was sleeping so close that they were talking 
 in subdued tones so as not to disturb her. 
 
 " Have ye anny idea what it manes, lovey," 
 Peggy entreated, pleadingly, " to earn six a 
 wake, aven ? Where a girl mus' crawl to 
 slape, and where she mus' pick up her few 
 bites of chape food, an' what there is fer her
 
 60 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 to do in the long avenin's whin her heart is 
 starvin' fer a bit o' pleasure? An' then kin 
 ye think what it mus' be whin 1 a girl like 
 Alma have got no job at all ? " 
 
 " Oh, do you think," Anne questioned, 
 earnestly, " that I can help her that she'll 
 let me?" 
 
 " I think," Peggy answered, " that ye kin 
 help wan another a lot if ye'll just begin 
 right 1 " 
 
 The girls were talking when the young 
 man came back with the answer to the note 
 he had carried. When he saw Anne, he 
 backed away from the door and stepped over 
 towards Martinelli's. As he did so, two 
 men came out of Neeley's. One was a man 
 of stocky build, well dressed as the Madison 
 Street clothiers dress a man. The other was 
 an Italian, evidently a labourer; he wore 
 brown corduroy pants, and a shabby cloth 
 coat the collar of which was turned up about 
 his neck. It appeared as if the Italian had 
 been sent on some errand by the other ; he 
 started north, but paused irresolutely in 
 front of Peggy's. 
 
 "Go on !" the other cried. "What're 
 you waitin' fer ? " 
 
 " See penny girl," the Italian muttered ; 
 but went on.
 
 THE PLOT THICKENS 61 
 
 When he was gone, the man who had 
 ordered him on spoke to the youth. 
 
 " Good-morning, Oliphant ; haven't seen 
 much of you for a day or two. Anything 
 doing?" 
 
 Oliphant smiled. " Yes," he said ; " don't 
 laugh. I've got a job with Kimbalton." 
 
 The man stared. " Ye're kiddin'," he de- 
 clared. 
 
 " No, I'm not. But he doesn't know who 
 I am. He gave me the job himself here 
 this morning. I've just been on an errand 
 for him taken a note and when I've deliv- 
 ered the answer, I'm to go to his Works and 
 hand that to the head bookkeeper." He 
 showed the scrap of paper with Kimbalton's 
 scrawl. 
 
 The man looked at it as if fascinated. 
 " That gives you a great chance, don't it ? " 
 he asked, eyeing Oliphant narrowly. 
 
 " I don't know ; but I hope so," the boy 
 answered. " If I can make good there, 
 maybe he'll listen to me." 
 
 The man laughed. " And if he don't ? " 
 
 "Well, I won't be any worse off; and I 
 shall know whether he can be appealed to for 
 a square deal." 
 
 " Hm. When you're fired, come around 
 and see me. I think I know of something
 
 62 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 that might interest you. Meanwhile, come 
 in and have a drink." 
 
 " Thanks, but I'd rather not." 
 
 " A cup o' coffee, then, and a cigar ? You 
 can watch for your man from Martinelli's. 
 That's Kimbalton's car, ain't it?" 
 
 " I don't know." 
 
 " A girl got out of it and went into Peg's. 
 I think she is Kimbalton's daughter. Is he 
 comin' here fer the answer to the note you 
 took?" 
 
 " I don't know." 
 
 " I suppose it'd be askiri! to inquire where 
 you was sent? " The tone in which this was 
 said was a dare ; but Tom Oliphant didn't 
 take it. 
 
 " I guess it's kind of confidential, or they'd 
 have telephoned or got word some other 
 way," he answered. 
 
 " Oh, all right." 
 
 They were in Martinelli's, now, sitting on 
 stools well back towards the end of the 
 counter. Suddenly, the face of Tom Oli- 
 phant's companion broke into a sardonic 
 smile. He seemed absorbed in something he 
 was watching in the street. Tom interest- 
 edly followed the direction of his gaze. 
 
 A heavily-built, sandy-complexioned man, 
 who had been walking briskly south on Hal-
 
 THE PLOT THICKENS 63 
 
 sted Street, stopped in front of Peggy's 
 empty outdoor stand, then stepped to the 
 door of the " imporium." 
 
 " See that man ? " Tom's lodging-house ac- 
 quaintance asked. " That's Burns, the great 
 detective." 
 
 Tom stared in wide-eyed interest. " I 
 wonder what he's doing here ? " he said. 
 Burns had gone into Peggy's shop. 
 
 " That's more than you'll ever know un- 
 less he tells you. He's a deep one. And he 
 never does any of the things anybody'd think 
 he'd do. You know Kimbalton's got trouble 
 at his place steel workers and machinery 
 erectors. Men puttin' up the new buildin* 
 won't let the millwrights set up the machinery 
 they made ; millwrights won't let steel work- 
 ers set it up deadlock buildin's been dyna- 
 mited twice. Burns is supposed to be on the 
 job fer Kimbalton old man's crazy at bein' 
 opposed ain't used to it. Last I heard was, 
 Burns had traced some o' the trouble to 
 Neeley's saloon. Now here he comes trottin' 
 down to the neighbourhood, ca'm an' casual, 
 just where you'd think he wouldn't show him- 
 self. He's a deep guy ; can't anybody ever 
 tell what hJs up to." 
 
 Then Tom saw his man the one to whom 
 he was to return the answer. He started up
 
 64 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 hastily. " I've got to go," he said. " Ex- 
 cuse me, Mr. McNabb." 
 
 " I'm through," McNabb said ; and went 
 out at Tom's heels. 
 
 " All right, Oliphant," he called to Tom, 
 when he had got outside. " I'll see you this 
 evening." 
 
 Tom handed over his message. The man 
 who took it looked from Tom to McNabb. 
 
 " That'll do," he said, curtly. 
 
 Tom stepped aside, and in an instant Burns 
 came out of Peggy's, apparently absorbed in 
 a " noon extra " he had bought. 
 
 His man approached him. Whatever 
 their game was, it was causing profound ex- 
 citement in Neeley's saloon. 
 
 " Where did Mr. Kimbalton pick up that 
 fellow Oliphant? " he asked. 
 
 " Oliphant ? " 
 
 " The fellow who carried the note for us." 
 
 "I don't know. Oliphant! That's the 
 name of a youngster, son of a down-state 
 bank cashier who was jailed, that's been try- 
 ing to see Kimbalton to get his intercession 
 wrote some threatening letters, when he 
 couldn't see him. And of course McNabb'd 
 get friendly with a boy that had it in for 
 Kimbalton. He'll use him, too. Better 
 keep your eye on Oliphant."
 
 THE PLOT THICKENS 65 
 
 " Yes, sir." 
 
 " Well, I guess they've all seen me I may 
 as well go on." 
 
 "And I'll go in here and get a cup o' 
 coffee while I wait for Mr. Kimbalton." 
 
 When the street in front of Peggy's was 
 clear, Tom Oliphant came back. The lim- 
 ousine still stood at the curb, and he was 
 loath to go into the shop. Peggy saw him, 
 divined his reluctance, and came to the door. 
 
 " I'm off for the job," he said, smiling. 
 
 " I told ye it was yer lucky day," she an- 
 swered. " I s'pose," she went on, guilefully, 
 "ye'll be usin' yer noon hour to write the 
 gran' news to yer ma." 
 
 He looked embarrassed and conscience- 
 smitten. 
 
 " I haven't been writing so very much, 
 lately. You see, I had nothing good to tell 
 her, so I didn't write." 
 
 " Nothin' good to tell yer mother ? " cried 
 Peggy, in comical despair. " Don't ye love 
 her?" 
 
 " Of course I love her ! " he replied, indig- 
 nantly. 
 
 " Well, then ! What could ye relate that'd 
 plaze her as much as that? What did ye 
 think she'd be wishin' to know ? The state 
 o' the markets ? My Ian' ! Why do God
 
 make min widout anny sinse at all ? Sure 
 they could use a little, where they nade so 
 much ! Now you wait while I git ye a pos'- 
 card a nice pos'-card that the letter-carrier 
 kin rade an' you tell her you've got a gran' 
 job and sind her the very most love that iver 
 a bye sint his mother " 
 
 " I don't know," he objected, " whether I've 
 got a grand job or not. I'd better wait and 
 see." 
 
 " Wait fer nothin' ! " she cried. " Tell 'er 
 the rist of it annyway." 
 
 She hurried into the shop, made apologies 
 to Anne, and reemerged with her post-card. 
 This was a favourite way for her daily penny 
 to be invested. No one would ever know 
 how many anxious home-folks had heard, at 
 last, on Peggy's post-cards. 
 
 " An' ye'll sure mail it, won't ye ? " she 
 entreated, as she watched him sign it. 
 " Sometimes I mistrust they don't. It's awful 
 hard fer some folks to be fergiven." 
 
 " I'll put your address on it, so the an- 
 swer'll come here," he said; "and then 
 you'll know ! " 
 
 He was adding this when Mr. Kimbalton 
 came. Burns' man, on the lookout, came 
 quickly from Martinelli's and spoke to Mr. 
 Kimbalton before the magnate addressed
 
 THE PLOT THICKENS 67 
 
 Peggy or Tom. Kimbalton showed, briefly, 
 the chagrin of a man who, priding himself on 
 his shrewd knowledge of human nature, is 
 shown as having been badly misled. 
 
 " All right," he said. " I suppose Burns 
 is right. We'll keep him where we can 
 watch him. But mind you do it ! " 
 
 " Yes, sir." 
 
 " What have you done with my little girl, 
 Peg?" 
 
 Peggy flushed guiltily at having been 
 caught neglecting first her business, and now 
 her hospitality, for this young man. 
 
 " She's inside." 
 
 But Anne, hearing her father's voice, came 
 out. 
 
 " I've had such a delightful call," she be- 
 gan. 
 
 "Tell me about it on the way down-town," 
 her father said. 
 
 Tom Oliphant raised his hat deferentially. 
 
 " I'm on my way to the Works, sir," he 
 said. 
 
 Kimbalton looked at him searchingly ; and 
 the boy, thinking he knew why, quailed. 
 
 " I'm afraid, Peggy," Kimbalton said to 
 her when Tom had passed out of hearing, 
 "that you made a very bad guess in that 
 young man."
 
 VII 
 
 In Which Petie and Polly Chiefly Figure 
 
 PERHAPS you think that was an extra- 
 ordinarily eventful morning of which 
 I've told you. (It was Thursday 
 morning, by the way.) I don't say that every 
 morning is quite as full of episode for Peggy. 
 But I do say that you should not hastily 
 discredit my account of that morning ; be- 
 cause there is a superabundance of material 
 for eventfulness ever at hand on Halsted 
 Street; and "anyway besides," things are 
 always happening in the vicinity of persons 
 like little Peg. In part she was made by her 
 environment, but in part, too, she recreated 
 her surroundings ; and I am inclined to 
 believe that if Peg had lived in Cranford 
 (supposing Peg could have lived in Cranford 1) 
 there would have been " drammer " in that 
 village. 
 
 On the following (Friday) evening, Peggy 
 was summoned from the supper table to go 
 to the drug store ; some one wanted her on 
 the 'phone. 
 
 It was a raw evening, and as soon as the 
 68
 
 PETIE AND POLLY 69 
 
 six o'clock rush was over, Peggy had aban- 
 doned outdoor trade. When the message 
 came, she and Polly and Petie were at the 
 supper table, and from it one or the other of 
 them but usually Peggy and seldom Polly 
 jumped when the tinkle of the store-bell 
 announced a customer. 
 
 I'd like you to see that room : Years ago 
 in Chicago rank individualism reigned in the 
 matter of street grades. You could dig your 
 lot as deep as you liked and have your side- 
 walk at any level your fancy dictated. 
 People who had a mile to go walked two 
 one mile up and down stairs. The basement 
 in which Peggy lived, and had her "impo- 
 rium," had originally been three feet below 
 what is now the prescribed street level. So 
 the front room when made into a shop was 
 raised by the simple expedient of lifting the 
 floor, or building a supplemental one, to the 
 street level. This gave the " imporium " a 
 " low-ceiled " effect ; but made it easier to 
 heat in winter and brought the top shelves 
 within reach even of Peg if she stood on a 
 soap-box. 
 
 The kitchen was on the old grade which 
 certainly added nothing to its healthfulness, 
 nor to its warmth in winter. Four steps led 
 down to it from the shop. On your left as
 
 yo THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 you came down these steps was the sink, 
 built against the partition wall ; then, a foot 
 or so out from the left wall, Peggy's kitchen 
 range, of goodly size and prosperous appear- 
 ance for when you live as Peggy lived, 
 your kitchen stove is easily the most impor- 
 tant of all your possessions. Beyond the 
 stove was a cot bed where Petie slept at 
 night ; daytimes, Peggy kept it covered with 
 a dark-coloured " tapestry " spread. Over 
 the bed was a window into an air-shaft which 
 made a deep jog in the room. Around the 
 corner of the jog was a door leading into that 
 one-time pantry where now Peggy and Polly 
 slept. Against the rear wall, a cupboard ; 
 against the other side-wall, a bureau ; in the 
 middle of the room, an oak extension table 
 reduced to its minimum size. There were 
 four oak dining chairs of the sort usually sold 
 with such extension tables by the " easy-pay- 
 ment " furniture emporiums of the neighbour- 
 hood, and a rocking-chair. 
 
 I want you to do more than see that room. 
 I want you to feel it. Perhaps I shall be able 
 to help you do this as I go on. That is why 
 I ask you to be patient about details. 
 
 At the moment on that Friday evening 
 about seven o'clock when you make your 
 first acquaintance with Peggy's kitchen and
 
 PETIE AND POLLY 71 
 
 living-room, the extension table was half set 
 that is, a red and white cloth was spread, 
 doubled, over one end of it. The dishes 
 were few, and coarse ; but in the cupboard 
 were some " best ones " which Peggy had 
 got as premiums. She had no great amount 
 of time for housewifeliness, but she was not 
 without her inclinations that way. 
 
 Polly, at that moment when I ask you 
 down the four steps from the shop-level, was 
 making a perilous stack of the supper dishes, 
 preparatory to carrying them to the sink. 
 She was a bit oddly attired : hair very ob- 
 viously done up to its uttermost, and adorned 
 with an enormous new bow of black taffeta 
 ribbon showing the effect of persistence. 
 Her dress-skirt looked as if it might be her 
 " good one " ; but instead of a waist she 
 wore a sacque of red eider-down flannel, 
 not at all clean. Polly was going to a dance 
 at one of the near-by schools recently opened 
 as a Social Centre ; and her toilet was in that 
 state of semi-completeness in which supper 
 time on Friday nights finds a majority of 
 schoolgirls. 
 
 Petie, at that same moment, was not vis- 
 ible ; but he was there. He had crawled 
 under his cot, which was also his cache, in 
 search of buried treasure. He came backing
 
 72 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 out, in Polly's path, as she started sinkward 
 with her stack of dishes, and only by a mir- 
 acle escaped upsetting her for which he 
 was scolded sharply. 
 
 " You'll have to tell Peg I couldn't wash 
 these I haven't time," Polly said, when she 
 had piled the last dish in the sink. 
 
 " Aw," Petie rejoined, " Peg ought to 
 know you wouldn't. You never have time 
 to do nothin' but wait on yerself." 
 
 " I'll thank you to mind yer own business," 
 commanded Polly, scathingly. 
 
 "Ye needn't thank me," Petie retorted, 
 " because I ain't goin' to do it." 
 
 He drew a chair up to the table and started 
 to work. The treasures drawn from his 
 cache were a handful of black curled hair 
 which we hope was given Petie by some 
 neighbourhood upholsterer or second-hand 
 dealer, and a piece of milliner's wire. Oc- 
 casionally, Petie withdrew his chewing-gum 
 in a long string, to aid in the process of 
 manufacture. 
 
 " Well, you can stop mindin' mine," Polly 
 declared, jerking out the lowest bureau 
 drawer and fishing from its tumbled contents 
 a pair of party shoes with patent leather 
 vamps and dirty white kid uppers. " I have 
 awful little pleasure, goodness knows. And
 
 PETIE AND POLLY 73 
 
 I'm not going to be late to this dance, just 
 for a lot of dishes." 
 
 She sat on the floor to put on her shoes. 
 There was a hole in one stocking, far enough 
 up so that it might show. Polly measured 
 carefully to see if it would, and when she 
 found it wouldn't, went on with her button- 
 ing. 
 
 " I should think," Petie observed unwill- 
 ing to let the quarrel languish, " that you 
 could get enough of school in the daytime, 
 without goin' back at night." 
 
 Polly jerked out the middle drawer and 
 brought forth a bright red cashmere waist, 
 evidently brand new and home-made ! 
 
 " If I didn't go there, where would I go?" 
 she cried, self-pityingly. " Peg would have 
 a fit if she knew I went to a regular dance." 
 
 "If she knew?" Petie echoed, quickly. 
 " Do you ever ? " 
 
 " I said she would if I went," Polly an- 
 swered, with an air of " hedging." " Will 
 you hook me ? " 
 
 She had taken off her sacque, revealing 
 for a moment her highly-improvised under- 
 garments, and was now wriggling into her 
 new waist, which fastened in the back. 
 
 Petie looked up from his mysterious occu- 
 pation. " Gee ! " he commented, noting the
 
 74 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 sleeves, ending above the elbows, " didn't ye 
 get the sleeves done ?" 
 
 "That's all you get for trying to make 
 anything stylish in this house," Polly re- 
 torted. " Hurry up, Petie ; will you ? " 
 
 Reluctantly Petie left his work and began 
 hooking mischievously doing it as awk- 
 wardly as he could. He pulled Polly around 
 from the mirror she was facing, and headed 
 her towards the opposite side of the room, 
 pushing her steadily in that direction until 
 he had her " bump up against " the sink. 
 There he turned her once more, and con- 
 tinued his strenuous exertions, to the tune of 
 Polly's exasperated protests. 
 
 " Stand still ! Can't you ? " he cried. 
 
 " How can I, when you push me?" 
 
 And so on, until it was done, and Petie 
 had resumed his work. 
 
 "What are you doing, anyway?" Polly 
 demanded, suspiciously. 
 
 " Nothin' you could understand," Petie 
 answered, darkly. 
 
 Polly took an imitation Irish collar and a 
 rhinestone brooch out of the top drawer 
 perhaps you are wondering where Peg kept 
 her things ; but then, Peg hadn't many to 
 keep and began arranging her " Dutch 
 neck" garniture.
 
 PETIE AND POLLY 75 
 
 " More sleuthing, I suppose," she sneered. 
 
 Petie did not care to have his business in- 
 quired into ; what detective would tell any- 
 thing to a woman? So, to divert attention, 
 he observed : 
 
 " It's a wonder you wouldn't look at yer- 
 self in the back." Polly was evidently ad- 
 miring what she could see in the mirror. 
 
 "What's the matter?" she demanded, 
 craning. 
 
 " I dunno," Petie answered, " but it looks 
 fierce." 
 
 Polly went to the sink, snatched down the 
 small looking-glass to use for a hand-mirror, 
 and saw that the strips of white tape, to 
 which her hooks and eyes were riveted, 
 showed all the way down her back : in her 
 inexperience, she had neglected to sew her 
 tapes to her dress along their outer edge ; 
 and, the waist being too narrow across the 
 back, it gaped distressingly. 
 
 " Oh, fer goodness' sake ! " Polly cried. 
 " It's a wonder Peg wouldn't stay home and 
 help me. She can't be all this time telephon- 
 ing. Can't you put a pin in it, Petie ? " 
 
 With an air of resignation Petie laid down 
 his important and manly task and directed 
 his attention to the frivolities of feminine 
 finery. He took the pin Polly handed him.
 
 76 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 "Put it in so it won't show," Polly 
 directed. 
 
 " You bet ! " agreed Petie, cheerfully, 
 pointing the pin meaningfully towards her 
 marrow. 
 
 " Oow ! " Polly screamed, and made a 
 dart for Petie, to hit him. 
 
 Petie side-stepped expertly. " Well," he 
 said in an injured tone, " you told me to put 
 it in so it wouldn't show." 
 
 With angry and offended air, Polly went 
 to the window and shouted up the air-shaft : 
 
 " Al-ma 1 " 
 
 Alma's little bedroom was over Peggy's 
 and Polly's, on the second floor. 
 
 Petie took advantage of her back being 
 turned to try on the false beard he had been 
 making. He stepped to the bureau and 
 looked at his disguised self in the glass. 
 The effect seemed to give him complete sat- 
 isfaction. He took his cap from his pocket, 
 replaced it with the beard, and glanced at 
 Polly. 
 
 Alma answered down the shaft : " Whoo- 
 hoo ! " 
 
 "Can you come down a minute?" Polly 
 called. 
 
 "Sure!" 
 
 The shop-bell rang.
 
 PETIE AND POLLY 77 
 
 "Tend the store, will you?" Polly di- 
 rected Petie. 
 
 But it was Peggy, returned. Petie sidled 
 past her, towards the door. 
 
 " Now you stop chasin' crime at nine 
 o'clock, Petie, like a good boy," Peggy 
 charged. " Ye have to git up so airly." 
 
 "All right," Petie promised, with a re- 
 signed air. Even Peg was deficient in un- 
 derstanding of his " profession." 
 
 " You were long enough ! " commented 
 Polly, as Peggy came down the steps. 
 " Who was it ? " 
 
 Peggy seemed disinclined to answer. 
 " My 1 but you look nice 1 " she said, eva- 
 sively. 
 
 " Would you put in a pin or two for me ?" 
 Polly asked. "That nasty little Petie put 
 one right into my spine." 
 
 " Boys ain't much at pinnin'," Peggy ex- 
 tenuated. 
 
 When Alma came in, Polly explained : 
 
 " I wanted you to pin me, Alma ; but 
 Peggy's got here, at last" 
 
 "Annybody'd think I'd been gon' a 
 wake ! " said Peggy, rather crossly. 
 
 "Where were you?" Alma asked not 
 inquisitively, but by way of making conver- 
 sation.
 
 78 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 " To the drug store ; some wan tilephoned 
 to me." 
 
 " ' Some one,' " echoed Polly, pinning on 
 her hat. " You're awful mysterious ! " 
 
 " I ain't," Peggy retorted. " I don't know 
 who it was." 
 
 " I bet you do, a' right," Polly said as she 
 struggled into her coat. " But you won't 
 tell." 
 
 Peggy ignored this. 
 
 " How d' ye like yer job ? " she asked 
 Alma. 
 
 " Oh, it's all right. But I have to stand 
 all day, and my feet're killing me." 
 
 "Well, now," cried Peggy, sympathetic- 
 ally, " I know how they fale. Set down in 
 the rockin'-chair an* rest 'em." 
 
 " I'm going," Polly announced, starting up 
 the stairs. 
 
 " Have a good time ! " Peggy called after 
 her. 
 
 " I will ! " Polly answered. 
 
 And no one could doubt that she meant 
 to.
 
 VIII 
 
 In Which Anne Kimbalton Begins To Get 
 Acquainted 
 
 ALMA from her rocking-chair looked 
 after Polly with almost hostile re- 
 sentment. 
 
 "Why d' you spoil that girl so, Peggy?" 
 she blurted out. 
 
 " Why wouldn' I ? " Peggy retorted. 
 " Tis little enough I kin give her." 
 
 " Well, you could give her a fair chance," 
 Alma argued, wisely ; " and you're not doin' 
 it, when you make things so easy for her. 
 She's got to fight her way in the world 
 ain't she ? " 
 
 " I s'pose so ; but I'm hopin' her iducation'll 
 make it aisy fer her that she won't have 
 to go t'rough what I did. I see so much, 
 Alma, of girls that ain't fit to fight. You 
 know how 'tis : they can't do nothin' in par- 
 tic'lar, an' nobody'll pay 'em enough to kape 
 alive on an' what happens ? I want Polly 
 to stay at school till she's 1'arned enough to 
 take good care of herself. She'd 1'ave to- 
 morrow, if I didn' humour her wid bits o' hair 
 79
 
 8o THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 bows an* some money now an' then to go to 
 shows." 
 
 Alma shook her head, unconvinced. " You 
 got a grand idea what educational do," she 
 said. " I've had as much schoolin' as Polly's 
 likely to take an' you can see what a lot it 
 does fer me 1 " 
 
 Peggy had taken off her jacket and re- 
 vealed her own " dressing-up " : a plaid flan- 
 nel waist with a red neck-bow. She fluffed 
 out her hair at the sides and, still standing 
 before the mirror, experimented with a 
 weather-beaten red millinery rose which she 
 stuck in her hair and then hastily, and guilt- 
 ily, withdrew because it was so obvious an 
 attempt at a festive appearance. 
 
 Alma could not restrain a smile of under- 
 standing ; and Peggy, seeing this reflected in 
 the mirror, explained : 
 
 " I thought I'd fix up a bit fer Miss Kirn- 
 balton. I ast her to come over this avenin'." 
 
 " I think she'll like it," Alma answered, un- 
 deceived. " Well, I guess I'll be goin'." 
 
 " What fer ? " Peggy cried, in dismay. 
 
 " I don't think Miss Kimbalton's comin' to 
 see me," Alma replied, evasively. 
 
 " Sure she is ! " Peggy hastened to assure 
 her. " I told her how the girls that live 'round 
 here comes droppin' in when they've no better
 
 ANNE GETS ACQUAINTED 81 
 
 place t' go, an' she said she'd love to come 
 over an' git acquainted." 
 
 Alma's eyes flashed scorn. " Ain't you got 
 any sense?" she sneered. 
 
 Spiritedly, Peggy confronted her. " I got 
 more'n you have, Alma ! I hope I got better 
 sinse than to have it in fer anny wan jest be- 
 cause they're rich. She can't help what she 
 is ! We gotta judge her by what she wants 
 to be. Lan' sakes ! I bet them rich people 
 has got their tribalations same as the rest 
 of us an' why we shouldn' be kind to 'em, 
 I niver could see ! " 
 
 " I'll bet she's comin' over here promisin' 
 herself that she'll be kind to us" Alma 
 charged, bitterly. 
 
 "Well, what of it?" Peggy cried. "She 
 don't want to be no pauper, no more'n we 
 do ! An' I guess we kin give her as good as 
 we git ! " 
 
 Alma laughed. " You do put things the fun- 
 niest I ever heard," she declared ; but even 
 now, some of her class belligerence was gone. 
 
 " I don't see nothin' funny about it," Peggy 
 retorted. " I'm jist plain sorry fer that girl." 
 
 " Well, / ain't 1 " Alma declared. Her ex- 
 periences of the past weeks had not tended to 
 deepen her sympathy for the idle, wasteful 
 rich.
 
 82 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 " Maybe you don't know enough about 
 her," Peggy suggested. 
 
 " I know what I've read in the papers " 
 
 " Oh, I know ! How she lives in five 
 houses an* a yatch an' a private car an' a few 
 autymobiles ; an' is always chasin' from wan 
 to another o' thim wid her tongue hangin' 
 out like a dog that runs under a kerridge. 
 But that don't kape her from bein' a fine 
 girl!" 
 
 Alma shrugged, disbelievingly. "What 
 does she want of five houses, if she's a fine 
 girl?" 
 
 "I don' belave she does want thim," Peggy 
 retorted. 
 
 "Then why does she have them?" 
 
 " Say, Alma ! " Peggy answered, a little 
 impatiently ; " you don't understan'. Thim 
 people ain't hardly freer to do what they 
 want than if they was workin' out a thirty- 
 day fine. Now, it seems to me I niver seen 
 annybody that naded frien'liness anny more 
 'n what that girl does. An' what call have we 
 got to be stuck up an' snippy to her ? I say 
 she ought to have her chance to git on same 
 as anny other girl. If she hands us some- 
 thin' we don' want, there ain't no law that 
 kin make us take it ! Take a chance on her, 
 Alma. Lots o' people don't nade nothin'
 
 ANNE GETS ACQUAINTED 83 
 
 but a chance to show what real stuff's in 'em. 
 Wait ! Maybe that's her now." 
 
 The shop-bell rang, and Peggy ran up the 
 steps. A sour-visaged woman, shawl-en- 
 veloped, was laying down a penny for an 
 evening paper. 
 
 " D' ye rade the comics?" Peggy asked 
 her, eagerly. 
 
 "No!" 
 
 "Would ye min' if I tore 'em off? The 
 kids 'round here is crazy fer 'em." 
 
 The woman looked, for an instant, as if she 
 were about to refuse. Then, trying to act 
 more ungracious than she felt, she said : 
 " I don't care." 
 
 " Thanks ! " Peggy cried. 
 
 And just then an urchin came in a very 
 diminutive urchin, of the Italian persuasion, 
 with very big, black eyes. 
 
 "Watch him," Peggy said to the woman. 
 Then, to the youngster, "Wha'd ye want, 
 Tony?" 
 
 Tony smiled an irradiating smile but 
 said nothing. 
 
 Peggy produced the comic sheet and 
 handed it cnrer the counter to him ; where- 
 upon the smile that had seemed expansive 
 enough, an instant before, became infinitely 
 more so until it made one marvel how so
 
 84 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 small a thing as Tony could produce so 
 great a smile. 
 
 That was all no spoken word of entreaty 
 or of thanks and Tony was off with his 
 treasure. 
 
 " His pa got killed on the railroad," Peggy 
 explained to the woman; "an' his ma don't 
 have no pinnies to spare fer comics. But if 
 Tony have iver seen himself smile, I don't 
 wonder he likes to practice at it do you ? " 
 
 " No," said the woman ; and moved towards 
 the door. Then she came back a step or two. 
 " Do you know where Tony lives? "she asked. 
 
 " Sure ! " cried Peggy and told her. 
 
 " I bet she lends a hand there poor 'n' all 
 as she is ! " Peggy commented to Alma, 
 when the woman was gone. " People is 
 mos'ly kind whin they know all they nade 
 is the chance." 
 
 " If you could buy people at what some 
 folks think they're worth, and sell 'em for 
 what you think they're worth, you'd sure 
 make money ! " Alma laughed. But the 
 bitterness was gone from her manner. 
 
 Anne Kimbalton had dined early, at Hull- 
 House ; and she walked up Halsted Street to 
 Peggy's. Andrew Kimbalton's daughter 
 was no fool. Young as she was, she realized
 
 ANNE GETS ACQUAINTED 85 
 
 something of the disadvantage of her class in 
 trying, as so many of its members sincerely 
 were, to make a part of their wealth service- 
 able to those who need it most ; and she was 
 eager to find some way to better understand- 
 ing. All her life she had heard her parents' 
 importunate mail discussed ; had known some- 
 thing of the cases of individuals who presented 
 themselves for succour or support or other 
 financial favouring and something of the 
 sad proportion of those helped who showed 
 a rank, incontrovertible unworthiness. She 
 had heard talk, at her father's table and else- 
 where, of other ways of benevolence : of 
 money given to " Boards " and chiefly con- 
 sumed in executive expenses ; of money that 
 endowed colleges where youngsters cheated 
 and pranked, versus money that built libraries 
 where he who hungered for knowledge might 
 find it ; and so on. Her father admitted that 
 his was the gift to make, but not to disburse 
 money ; that he hoped she, who had never 
 become, as he was, over-developed in ac- 
 quisitiveness, might learn how to distribute 
 wisely. Her training for this, so far from 
 being hurried, could hardly be said to have 
 begun ; but the idea was always more or less 
 kept present in her mind. 
 
 So it was in no mere giggly mood of
 
 86 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 adventure that she was going to Peggy's. 
 The girl was, if anything, rather too des- 
 perately in earnest. Mindful of the barriers 
 of class-consciousness, she had worn her 
 plainest clothes; but the result was not 
 altogether a disguise. Her plain, boyish 
 tailored suit was old, but the smart cut was 
 evident. She wore what in her English 
 school days she had learned to call a "shirt," 
 of pleated percale, with an attached collar of 
 Eton shape and a boyish Windsor tie. And 
 her English hat was almost the counterpart 
 of an Eton boy's silk hat, only it was made 
 of black velvet. The effect was far from 
 inconspicuous in Halsted Street where a 
 willow plume (had Anne possessed such a 
 thing) would have passed unnoticed. 
 
 Peggy smothered a gasp when she saw 
 her. 
 
 " Well ! " cried Anne, when greetings had 
 been exchanged. " I've given away my 
 penny." 
 
 " An' the wan that got it didn' say ' How 
 dare you ? ' " Peggy teased. 
 
 " No ; you were right. I wish you could 
 have seen her ! She was about that high," 
 Anne measured to indicate a child of six 
 years or so, " and when I spied her, she had 
 her cunning little button of a nose flattened
 
 ANNE GETS ACQUAINTED 87 
 
 against the window of a shop something like 
 yours, Peggy, only it sells candies and a few 
 toys, too. It wasn't hard to get acquainted, 
 and we went in and bought a doll for a 
 penny. Before I left home, I put some scraps 
 in my purse thinking things might work out 
 this way and I sat down there in the shop 
 and dressed that dolly. I don't believe that 
 child had ever seen a doll dressed before ! " 
 
 " Of course she hadn't ! " Peggy exclaimed, 
 delightedly. " You was openin' up a new 
 world to her, all right." 
 
 "Well, it was nothing to the world she 
 opened up to me ! I went home with her. 
 And can you believe it ? that baby is the 
 mother of a family ! She is the eldest of four 
 pretty as picture-children, every one of 
 them. The father has been gone fourteen 
 months ; they don't know whether he's dead 
 or alive and the mother works in a bakery. 
 She goes to work at four in the morning, 
 and leaves those babies in a dark, cold cellar. 
 What do you suppose the midget of my ac- 
 quaintance did ? She was out to buy some 
 bread, she told me, and we got it. But as 
 we neared her house I could hardly keep up 
 with her flying wee feet. She ran ahead of 
 me down the narrow passageway to the 
 rooms at the rear, and burst in with her dolly
 
 88 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 to give to the baby 1 And she was even 
 more radiantly happy giving the doll to the 
 year-old baby than I had been giving it to 
 her. And think how ashamed I felt ! Me 
 giving a penny, and that darling wee crea- 
 ture giving her all ! " 
 
 " I'll bet ye gave more'n a penny," Peggy 
 answered, her eyes shining. 
 
 " Well, I should hope so 1 But I want you 
 to tell me what you think I'd better do. 
 That mother must be helped, so she can stay 
 home with those babies. I wonder if it 
 wouldn't be a doubtful kindness for us to try 
 to find the father ? " And so on ; until Anne, 
 ashamed of monopolizing the conversation 
 with her penny-adventure, asked Peggy : 
 
 "What did you do with your penny to- 
 day?" 
 
 Peggy laughed, and ran up the steps into 
 the shop ; there she dipped behind a counter 
 and brought forth a penny clay pipe and 
 a bowl of soapsuds. She blew, with evi- 
 dent relish, a large bubble and tossed it 
 towards them. The girls laughed. 
 
 " I had about siventane kids in here this 
 afternoon ; an' whin we got t'rough I dassent 
 give the pipe to no wan o' them, er there' d 
 of been a riot. So I'm kapein' it to sind to 
 some child that can't go out to play."
 
 ANNE GETS ACQUAINTED 89 
 
 " I suppose there are lots of them around 
 here?" Anne asked. 
 
 Peggy nodded with a sigh. 
 
 " I wonder if I'll ever get acquainted like 
 you are," Anne went on, eagerly. 
 
 " Sure you will, lovey," Peggy reassured 
 her; "but ye've got quite a lot to contind 
 wid." 
 
 Anne read Peggy's look. " Something's 
 wrong," she exclaimed. "What is it? 
 Please tell me." 
 
 " Well, I dunno," Peggy answered in com- 
 ical despair. 
 
 " I wore the plainest I had," Anne declared, 
 apologetically. 
 
 "That might be," Peggy laughed, whim- 
 sically. 
 
 " Never mind ; what can we do about it?" 
 Anne demanded in a businesslike tone. 
 
 Peggy looked her over, thoughtfully. " It 
 might be the hat," she hazarded. 
 
 Anne took her hat off. Peggy shook her 
 head. 
 
 " No. Maybe the collar " 
 
 " The collar won't come off," Anne ex- 
 plained ; " it is sewed to my shirt." 
 
 Peggy and Alma gasped. 
 
 " Sewed to yer " Peggy began. But 
 
 Anne removed her coat and they could see
 
 90 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 that what she called her shirt was not a 
 nether garment. " Lan' sakes 1 " Peggy 
 cried, relieved ; " I thought you meant a 
 dickey. Now," still studying Anne, " 1'ave us 
 see ; none o' my things' d fit ye. But maybe 
 Alma's got a waist from las' summer that's 
 ironed so you could wear it. She lives right 
 up-stairs, you know." 
 
 " Why, of course," Alma said ; " if Miss 
 Kimbalton wouldn't mind " 
 
 "Indeed, I'd be very grateful," Anne de- 
 clared. 
 
 " But say ! " Peggy reminded as she went 
 with them towards the steps, " the girls' 11 be 
 droppin' in by the time you git back. If we say 
 ' Miss Kimbalton,' I'm afraid it'll make them 
 feel kind o' well, you know ! Until they 
 git acquainted wid ye, they might think you 
 was here to rubber. Would you mind if we 
 said ' Annie ' ? " 
 
 " Not a bit ! " answered Anne, smiling at 
 Peggy's wisdom. 
 
 " My Ian' ! I hope them two gits rale well 
 acquainted," Peggy ejaculated, wistfully, 
 when the shop door had closed on them.
 
 IX 
 
 In Which Tom Gets a Message 
 
 H, dear ! Polly have gon' an' laid 
 down on me again 1" Peggy stood 
 midway on the steps and, looking 
 down into the sink, saw the dirty dishes. 
 But she brightened after a moment of dis- 
 may, and went to work at them in a matter- 
 of-fact sort of way as if she had not really 
 half expected to find things otherwise. 
 Mindful of her best waist, though, she 
 pinned one end of a towel about her, apron- 
 wise, using the other end to dry her dishes. 
 She was singing at her task when she heard 
 the shop-bell ring. 
 
 " Oh, bee-lave me if aaal thim endeaaring 
 young chaarrms," she continued, stepping, 
 dish in hand, to the foot of the stairs to see if 
 the customer needed waiting on or could 
 help himself. Then : " Oh 1 " It was Tom 
 Oliphant who entered. 
 
 " Good-evening," he said, coming to the 
 top of the steps. " I don't suppose there's 
 any answer to my post-card yet ; but as I 
 9 1
 
 92 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 was passing, I thought it wouldn't do any 
 harm to see." 
 
 " Not a bit ! " Peggy answered. " Mos' 
 like it'll come in the mornin'. Yer ma 
 won't make you wait so long as you made 
 her. Come in, won't you ? You kin see I'm 
 busy." 
 
 " Can't I help?" he asked, shyly. 
 
 " Sure, there ain't enough fer two." 
 
 He sat down on the top step and watched 
 her intently for a moment. They were both 
 more than a bit constrained ; he could ac- 
 count for this in himself although with a 
 blush but he misinterpreted it in her. 
 
 " That wasn't the only reason I came," he 
 said, presently making an abrupt and awk- 
 ward beginning at what he wanted to say. 
 
 " No ? Did you git the job all right ? " 
 
 " Yes, I got the job ; but there's something 
 queer about it. I hate to tell you you'll 
 think I'm ungrateful that I love to whine. 
 God knows I don't. But I can't help feeling 
 that I'm being watched all the time." 
 
 Peggy coloured remembering Mr. Kim- 
 balton's parting words yesterday morning. 
 
 "Well," she retorted, "what d' you care 
 if you are ? They'll see all the quicker that 
 ye're goin' to make good." 
 
 "Then you don't think it's imagination ?"
 
 TOM GETS A MESSAGE 93 
 
 " I dunno," Peggy answered, directly ; 
 " I thought yisterday that Mr. Kimbalton 
 acted, jist before he wint away, like some 
 wan had told him who you was. But s'po- 
 sin' they did ! It might make him a bit sus- 
 picious at first ; but if he has you watched 
 close enough, he'll soon 1'arn the kind of a 
 fella you are." 
 
 " It's like you to put it that way," the boy 
 declared, gratefully. " Until I met you, the 
 only people who took any interest in my 
 troubles well 1 you know how it is : most 
 people feel that they've got to show their 
 sympathy for you by making you feel as if 
 they thought nobody ever had troubles like 
 yours. But you you kind of take the sting 
 out of things, somehow. I I guess you're 
 about the about the best friend I've got !" 
 
 " Oh, fer the Ian' sakes ! " Peggy cried, 
 partly to turn the conversation and partly in 
 real contrition because she had been so slow 
 remembering ; " I'm a gran' body to sind a 
 message to ! Wan o' yer friends have jist 
 had me to the tillyphone." 
 
 " One of my friends ? " in great surprise. 
 
 " Sure ! They sint fer me from the drug 
 store to take the message." 
 
 "Who did?" 
 
 " I couldn' jist git the name ; but he said
 
 94 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 it didn't matter that you'd know. You 
 was to go to here : I've got the place 
 written down," she handed a memorandum 
 to Tom " an' git a package he said it was 
 valyable." 
 
 " Are you sure," he asked, studying the 
 address, " that it was me he meant ? " 
 
 " If yer name's Tom Oliphant which is 
 more'n you iver told me." 
 
 " That's my name, all right. But I don't 
 know this address. What was I to do with 
 the package ? " 
 
 " You was to kape it safe fer him till he 
 comes back, the first of the wake." 
 
 " That must have been McNabb," the boy 
 said, puzzled. " He told me last night he 
 was going away for a day or two. He rooms 
 in the place I do, and has been real kind to 
 me in the way I told you about helping me 
 to feel abused. But this's sort of queer " 
 
 " I don't see annythin' quare about it," she 
 retorted. " That place ye' re to go to is quite 
 a ways off, an' maybe he hadn' time to go 
 fer himself." 
 
 " But I don't see," reflectively, " how I'm to 
 get it if I don't know who it's for." 
 
 "He said you was jest to say the package 
 fer Mr. Oliphant." 
 
 " Well, I don't like to seem suspicious ; but
 
 TOM GETS A MESSAGE 95 
 
 how'm I going to keep a valuable package 
 in a lodging-house ? McNabb ought to know 
 that!" 
 
 " He did ! " Peggy cried, eagerly. " He 
 says : ' If Oliphant has no place to kape it, 
 maybe he could I'ave it at your place ? ' and 
 I says, ' Sure ! ' I wouldn't wonder if it's a 
 Chris'mas present fer some wan his girl, 
 mos' likely." 
 
 "That's probably it," Tom agreed. "I 
 hope he's got one a girl, I mean. Say! I 
 feel like a dog. I'm getting suspicious of 
 everybody and everything. That's what 
 being down does for you. Here ! give me 
 those dishes to put in the cupboard. That'll 
 help me to feel like a home-folks human 
 being again." 
 
 He took the cups and saucers from her 
 hand, and as he did so, the shop-bell rang. 
 Peggy ran up the steps. 
 
 Two girls had entered and were coming 
 back towards the kitchen. One was Ida 
 Levin, a Russian Jewess and an orphan ; the 
 other was Katie Sczymanska (pronounced 
 Chemanska), a Polish girl. Both lived in 
 the neighbourhood, and worked not far from 
 there. Ida, who was eighteen, stitched belts 
 to cheap corset covers, in an underwear 
 factory. If she sewed belts on seven hundred
 
 96 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 and eighty-four corset covers a day averag- 
 ing more than sixteen hundred yards of 
 machine stitching, for she sewed both edges 
 and finished the ends she could earn a 
 dollar minus the cost of all the thread she 
 used and all the needles she broke. She 
 would have been well content enough if this 
 pay were to be had for sixty hours a week, 
 fifty-two weeks a year. But it was not. She 
 averaged about seven months of full work a 
 year, two months of no work at all, and three 
 months of work for two or three days a week ; 
 which brought her income down to less than 
 four dollars a week. Ida was a clever girl, 
 and ambitious clever, but unskilled. She 
 lodged with a Russian Jewish family on 
 Jefferson Street, and paid a dollar a week for 
 half of a three-quarter-size cot which she 
 shared with a daughter of the house, in a 
 room where two other daughters of the house- 
 hold also slept off the family kitchen. Out of 
 her slender remainder, Ida fed and clothed 
 herself and was now paying for instruction in 
 dressmaking, four nights a week in a trade 
 school. 
 
 Katie's parents lived in the Polish quarter 
 over the river ; but Katie did not live with 
 them. The father was a drunkard and habit- 
 ual idler ; the mother was a dull-witted
 
 TOM GETS A MESSAGE 97 
 
 (practically feeble-minded) creature of im- 
 moral rather than immoral nature. They 
 had so badly mistreated their children that 
 the children were taken from them by the 
 Juvenile Court, on complaint of the Juvenile 
 Protective Association. The younger ones 
 were in various homes for dependent girls and 
 boys. Katie, who was sixteen, supported her- 
 self. She was a cracker-packer, and averaged 
 four dollars and a half a week, three dollars 
 of which she paid for board with a family 
 of Polish Jews on Clinton Street. Katie was 
 " slow " ; perhaps stupid. The girls she met 
 from time to time in Peggy's, " of an avenin','' 
 knew more or less of Katie's history and in- 
 clined to take a kind of responsible care of 
 her, when they could. 
 
 Ida, who had eaten at Martinelli's, met 
 Katie at Peggy's door. 
 
 " Hello, Peggy 1 " she greeted. " How's 
 everything ? " 
 
 Peggy glanced back, embarrassed, into the 
 kitchen where Tom Oliphant was bestowing 
 her dishes in the cupboard. 
 
 " Oh, fine 1 " she answered. " How are 
 you?" 
 
 " Fair. Well ! " as she caught sight of 
 Tom, " I see you got comp'ny. We're buttin' 
 in, Katie."
 
 98 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 " No, ye're not ! " Peggy reassured them. 
 " This is this is a gentleman who come in 
 to see if he could if there was a letter fer 
 him " 
 
 " I was just going," Tom declared, reach- 
 ing rather wildly for his hat. " I'll be back 
 with that package later."
 
 X 
 
 In Which You Can Hear The Breakers 
 
 THERE was an embarrassed moment 
 after he left. Ida felt that they had 
 spoiled a pleasant call for Peggy, 
 and was heartily distressed. It was Katie 
 who restored ease. 
 
 " Say 1 " she sighed, ecstatically, " he's a 
 swell fella I Where' d ye git him, Peg ? " 
 
 "Oh, go on!" Peggy cried. "He's jest 
 wan o' me customers that dropped in like 
 yersilves. Lan' sakes ! If I iver git a fella, 
 he'll nade to be a night watchman, that can 
 do his courtin' in the airly afternoons." 
 
 When Anne and Alma returned, Peggy 
 welcomed them as if they had not been there 
 before. She was still busy with the last of 
 her few supper dishes ; and when she had 
 introduced " Annie " as casually as she could, 
 she went on with her work at the sink. The 
 four other girls seated themselves according 
 to their fancy : Ida on Petie's couch, Katie in 
 the rocking-chair, Annie on the steps, over 
 beside the sink, and Alma beside the table 
 where she could rest her elbows. 
 99
 
 loo THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 It was warm and snug in the little kitchen ; 
 it was homelike ; and the air was sweet with 
 the sense of haven. A bleak wind whistled 
 down Halsted Street and around its corners ; 
 groggeries were crowded, and worse dens 
 were beginning to be. Nickel theatres and 
 Greek candy parlours tantalized the pleasure- 
 starved. An occasional snatch of teasing 
 rhythm came floating down from a dance 
 hall. Hundreds were pouring into the By- 
 Joe (Bijou) and into the Academy, to share 
 in the splendid adventures of " Nellie, The 
 Beautiful Cloak Model" and "Jack Binns 
 At the Key." Hunger of many sorts stalked 
 the brightly-lighted street : hunger for food, 
 hunger for work, hunger for happiness, 
 hunger for forgetfulness, and hunger to des- 
 troy. And in a dimly-lighted wee shop and 
 a low back kitchen, a slip of a girl a child 
 quite without self-consciousness in what 
 she was doing, had created out of her mate- 
 rial next-to-nothingness a real port for frail 
 human craft in a storm. 
 
 " I seen yer piece in the paper this mornin', 
 Katie," Peggy laughed. 
 
 " What piece ? " Katie asked. 
 
 " Why, the wan that says ye're a dashin' 
 brunette, an' you an' three other girls is all 
 stuck on the same fella ; what shall ye do ?
 
 YOU CAN HEAR THE BREAKERS 101 
 
 An' Laura Jean says: 'Move where the men 
 ain't so scarce ! ' Ha ! Ha ! " 
 
 " But I ain't a dashin' brunette," objected 
 Katie the literal-minded. 
 
 " Ain't you ? Well, that's a dashin' new 
 red skirt ye've got on." 
 
 "Yeh," Katie agreed, showing her 
 pleasure. " I got it off of our foreman. 
 He's a real kind fella." 
 
 The other girls exchanged significant 
 glances. 
 
 " Katie ! " Ida cried, disgustedly. " You 
 ought to have a nurse. You ain't fit to be 
 goin' around alone. You got the least sense 
 I ever saw." 
 
 "Me?" echoed Katie stupidly. "What 
 fer?" 
 
 " What fer ? " Ida mimicked the blank tone 
 of Katie. " Don't that prove it? Don't you 
 know you can't take a skirt off a fella with- 
 out payin' fer it ? " 
 
 " I don't have to pay fer it he give it to 
 me," Katie persisted. "My old one was 
 wore out an' looked fierce. He ast me why 
 didn' I buy a new one, an' I told him I didn' 
 have no money." 
 
 " Oh, Katie ! " 
 
 "He said it made him sore to see a nice- 
 lookin' girl like me dressed so measly."
 
 102 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 "Well, if you'd stop buyin' pie an' cake 
 an* bananas an' sourkrout candy, maybe you 
 could buy yerself a skirt. Say, Peggy, ain't 
 it awful hot in here?" 
 
 Ida fell back faintly on the cot. Anne 
 cried out in distress : 
 
 " Oh, Peggy ! She's sick ! ' 
 
 Peggy went over to Ida to support her, 
 and Alma hurried to the sink to wring a rag 
 out in cold water. 
 
 "She needn't talk about me eatin'," Katie 
 observed, phlegmatically. "She don't eat 
 enough to keep alive on, since she's takin' 
 them lessons." 
 
 Ida struggled to her feet. " It is hot 
 here I " she protested. " And I been sitting 
 right by the stove. Never mind my eatin', 
 Katie ! I rather save on my stomach than 
 on my self-respeck." 
 
 The shop-bell rang at this juncture, and 
 Peggy hurried to attend. When she saw 
 who it was she said : 
 
 "Why, hello, Hazel ! I ain't seen you in a 
 long time." 
 
 " I know," Hazel answered, indifferently. 
 " Is The Ladies' Home out yet ? " 
 
 "Not the January. Have ye had the 
 Chris'mas wan ? " 
 
 " O' course ages ago ! Anything doin' ? "
 
 YOU CAN HEAR THE BREAKERS 103 
 
 She stepped back to where she could see the 
 kitchen and be seen from it. " Hello, girls ! " 
 
 Their gasp of surprise when they saw her 
 was not so well concealed but that Hazel 
 was aware of it. 
 
 " My ! ye look swell," Katie commented, 
 admiringly. " Where'd you git the willow 
 plume ? " 
 
 " Bought it, of course," Hazel answered, 
 tartly. "Where'd you suppose I got it? " 
 
 " Workin' in the same place ? " Peggy 
 asked. " I thought maybe you wint away." 
 
 " Yeh ; I'm in the same place though I 
 think I'll change. I've had such a lot o' 
 dates, lately, is the reason I ain't been 
 around. The way I been goin' is somethin' 
 awful ! " 
 
 " Set down ; can't you ? " Peggy urged. 
 
 " No ; I can't. I guess I'll take in a show. 
 I seen a swell one last night down-town. 
 You certainly do see style at them theatres. 
 Well, so long 1 " 
 
 " She must of got a raise," Katie observed 
 when Hazel was gone. " Them plumes cost 
 fourteen dollars." 
 
 "You're the limit 1" Ida declared, exas- 
 perated. 
 
 " Don't you think," Anne ventured, a little 
 timidly, " that she might have bought it ? "
 
 " Oh, sure ! " Ida replied, sarcastically. 
 " She earns five dollars and a half a week, 
 sellin' gents' underwear, in the basement." 
 
 Peggy sighed sadly. " Ain't it a pity ? 
 But I was afraid Hazel'd go that way." 
 
 " Well, she's a fool ! " Ida said, rising to 
 go. " Now, Katie, you git wise to a few 
 things ; you see how it is ! You take back 
 that skirt, an' wear nothin' you can't earn 
 and that you can't expect everybody to be- 
 lieve you earn. Finery you can't account 
 fer ain't no better' n a brand on you even if 
 you got it honest, nobody's goin' to believe 
 you did. You wear it, an' they take you for 
 well, you know ! " 
 
 " I'll take it back," Katie promised, evi- 
 dently impressed. " I didn't know it was any 
 harm honest I didn't ! "
 
 XI 
 
 In Which Anne Makes a Suggestion 
 
 WHEN they were gone, Anne sat 
 looking at Peggy in a dumb won- 
 derment : she didn't know which 
 of a thousand questions to ask first, and she 
 was struggling with so deep a feeling that 
 all she could do was just look and look 
 finally through a blur of tears. 
 
 " Is it is it like this here every even- 
 ing ? " she managed at last to ask. " I mean, 
 do the girls come in, and talk this way ? " 
 
 "There's always a few o' thim," Peggy an- 
 swered. "Maybe you don't know it, but 
 there ain't hardly anny other place . thim 
 girls kin go. Whether they live with their 
 folks, or board, or lodge, there mos'ly ain't 
 anny place to set but the kitchen an' that's 
 full, an' noisy. The kids makin' rough-house, 
 maybe the baby cry in', an' maybe the pa 
 drinkin' beer an' playin' cards wid a bunch o* 
 min, or the ma doin' a part of her washin' 
 an' hangin' the kitchen full o' clo'es to dry. 
 The girls can't ask nobody to see 'em ; an' if 
 they want to see anny wan, they got to go 
 105
 
 106 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 out. If they spind a nickel fer a show, it 
 don't last but a little while an' out they go. 
 They ain't got no money fer to go to a dance 
 an' if they try to git took, it gits thim trou- 
 ble, sometimes. There ain't no place fer a 
 girl that can't spind, except walkin' up an' 
 down the strate, lookin' at folks buyin' hats 
 an' sodas an' candy an' theaytre tickets an' 
 that's no great fun, aven on a nice, warm 
 night. So I make 'em welcome whin they 
 drop in here. They kin look at Help Want- 
 eds, or rubber at the maggyzines, or set an' 
 talk as they fale like. It ain't much I kin 
 do but I do what I kin." 
 
 There was that about Peggy which made 
 both girls instinctively forbear to retort that 
 she did a very great deal, and that if other 
 people came anywhere near doing as much 
 in proportion to their abilities, the world 
 would be an infinitely easier place for the 
 hard-pressed to live in. Peggy's sincerity 
 and simplicity were too great to permit of 
 compliment. But when she said it wasn't 
 much that she could do, Alma went to her, 
 and took her in her arms, and kissed her 
 without comment as one can kiss only a 
 saviour; and Anne, understanding, turned 
 hastily away and dried her tears. 
 
 " Now, Peggy," Anne said, when she could
 
 ANNE MAKES A SUGGESTION 107 
 
 command herself, " tell me just what you 
 think I can do or help to do. I must give 
 Katie a new skirt. And Ida must let me pay 
 for those lessons. She can call it a loan if 
 she likes. Is there anything that can be 
 done for Hazel?" 
 
 Peggy and Alma looked questioningly at 
 one another, and doubtfully shook their 
 heads. 
 
 " If they do it for feathers, there's a screw 
 loose in 'em," Alma said. " If they're the 
 kind that you can do anythin' with, they 
 never give up, even fer hunger while the 
 lake's handy." 
 
 " Oh, Alma, darlin' ! " Peggy remonstra- 
 ted. " Ye' re thinkin' all girls is made o' fine, 
 strong stuff like you. They ain't, dear I 
 Look at Katie ! Katie don't mean no more 
 harm than a kitten ; but she jest ain't got 
 good sinse. I ain't never seen no girl like 
 Hazel that got back to workin' hard again 
 fer small pay. But maybe it was because 
 nobody tried long enough. I dunno. They 
 ought to have a chance offered 'em that's 
 sure. But I guess there's more hope in Katie 
 wid all her soft head ! if you kin git her 
 before she goes ! " 
 
 " Tell me what I can do, and how to do it. 
 Shall I send her a skirt, and not let her know
 
 io8 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 where it came from just say ' From a 
 friend ' ? Or shall I ask her out to buy it ? 
 Or shall I send her the money ? Or what ? " 
 
 " I wouldn't do any of them," Alma coun- 
 selled. " You see how Katie is : she's got 
 awful little sense, poor kid ! Had it all 
 starved and beat out of her, I guess if she 
 had any to start with. It ain't goin' to be no 
 kindness to Katie to upset her by sudden 
 gifts she ain't wise enough to spot the 
 difrence between gettin' a thing from you 
 an' gettin' it from some other person that'll 
 make her pay dear fer it. What that kid 
 needs to learn is : not to want what she can't 
 earn." 
 
 " Then how can I give her the skirt ? " 
 
 " You can't. But you can help her buy it. 
 Loan her the money an' let her pay it back 
 as she can " 
 
 Alma stopped short, and shook her head. 
 "Then Katie'd borrow where she hadn't 
 ought to ! " she said, with sudden realization. 
 " Or get the easy payment idea, which she 
 don't seem to have caught yet lots of girls 
 buy all they wear on the installment plan, an' 
 pay double fer it! I dunno I give Katie 
 up." 
 
 Anne turned, distressed, to Peggy. " Do 
 you give her up, too?" she asked.
 
 ANNE MAKES A SUGGESTION 109 
 
 Peggy was loath to discredit anything 
 Alma had said ; she was so eager to have 
 Alma feel her value for helping other girls. 
 
 "Alma's right," she answered, slowly; 
 " there ain't no doubt about it. But o' course 
 I know what she manes : she kin see no way 
 to give Katie a rid skirt, right now, widout 
 maybe doin' her harm. That's the trouble 
 wid so much that's give. But Alma have a 
 wonderful idea o' what could be done fer 
 Katie if anny wan had that much love. She 
 was tellin' me about it, an' I got so excited ! 
 She knows what Katie nades ; on'y it's so 
 much to ask." 
 
 " Oh ! " Anne cried ; " think how much I've 
 got!" 
 
 Peggy smiled whimsically. " Not money, 
 dear," she said ; " but love. Money, or 
 things money'll buy, is jest what Katie 
 mustn't get gave to her right now it's 
 steadyin' she nades ; falein' that some wan 
 keers tur'ble much if she kapes straight, or 
 not. If Katie had sinse enough to think 
 about goin' wrong, ye couldn' blame her if 
 she thought it didn' matter to no wan what 
 she done. If she could jest git it in her poor 
 head that some wan cares ! Thafs what 
 Katie nades 1 You kin see how it steadies 
 her aven whin Ida scolds at her ; but Ida
 
 I io THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 can't mind Katie all the time she've her own 
 battles to fight." 
 
 Anne was thinking hard. " And I don't 
 suppose Ida would let anybody help her 1 " 
 she said. 
 
 " She would if she liked you," Alma de- 
 clared. " But she'd have to feel sure about 
 you, or she'd rather starve. She'd be awful 
 sore if she thought she was bein' felt sorry 
 fer." 
 
 " I see ! " Anne exclaimed. " If I can make 
 them like me, I can help them even Hazel, 
 maybe ! but if I can't, my money is likely to 
 do more harm than good. Now, what shall 
 I do? Have I a chance at all if I let them 
 know who I am ? Will they ever give me 
 even a trial ? Or will they jump to the con- 
 clusion that I'm a fool because I'm rich ? " 
 
 Peggy laughed delightedly. " Tis a pity," 
 she said, " that folks don't mingle more so 
 the poor could fin' out that the rich ain't all 
 mane an' uppish an' unheedin', an' the rich 
 could fin' out that the poor ain't all dang'r- 
 ous. But it'd be kind o' hard to begin, I'm 
 thinkin' ; harder for Ida an' Katie than fer 
 you an' your kind. But I kin see how it'll 
 maybe be a bit hard fer you to begin ; it's 
 like you said : I'm afraid they wouldn' give 
 you no fair chance Ida'd turn you down, an*
 
 ANNE MAKES A SUGGESTION in 
 
 Katie'd go to pieces on you, before you 
 could show 'em what you meant to do." 
 Peggy shook her head. " You gotta have 
 more'n the will to do in this world : you 
 gotta know how." 
 
 The three girls sat and looked at one 
 another blankly. Each was revolving in her 
 own mind all the possibilities of the situation. 
 
 " I guess," said Peggy, softly, " the Son o' 
 God didn' make no mistake whin He set out 
 to help folks : He knew where to begin." 
 The nativity in the manger was strongly in 
 her mind because of the approach of Christ- 
 mas, and the omnipresence of the theme in 
 magazine picture and story ; her shop was 
 hung with coloured posters picturing madon- 
 nas and magi and meek cattle and wonder- 
 ing shepherds, and The Child : naked, out- 
 cast, possessionless but pregnant with power 
 to shake the world and to save it. 
 
 " And I," Anne sighed, " am like the Rich 
 Young Man : I don't want to sell all that I 
 have, and give to the poor ; but I'll try not to 
 ' turn away, sorrowful.' Maybe there's a 
 middle ground ! And anyway, I want to sell 
 most that I have and give to the poor but I 
 want to see how it should be done. Now, 
 you girls tell me what you think of this : I 
 suppose you know that my father began as
 
 112 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 a poor boy. He came to Chicago when he 
 was a lad of fourteen, more than fifty years 
 ago. He lived over here on the West Side, 
 and carried his tin dinner-pail and thought 
 he was on the highroad to fortune when he 
 was getting eight dollars a week he says he 
 has never felt as rich since. Well, he just 
 worked and worked ; and didn't do much 
 but work, and study how to get on faster, 
 till his youth was gone. He was an only 
 son, and he worshipped his widowed mother 
 I am afraid her husband hadn't made her 
 very happy and his first great dream of 
 riches was to buy her a fine home. At last 
 he was able to do this. In those days, the 
 neighbourhood around Peoria and Green 
 Streets and Washington Boulevard, and all 
 around there, was one of the nicest in Chicago ; 
 most of the men whose business was on the 
 West Side had their homes there. And a 
 little while after the Big Fire, father bought a 
 house there : a nice, white-stone-front, three- 
 story-and-basement house, for his mother and 
 himself, and tried to have in it all the things 
 his mother had dreamed about through the 
 years when she was so poor and had to live 
 meanly. She was a New England girl, and 
 her ideas of h"8me never changed much. 
 Father says it ,was a time when furniture and
 
 ANNE MAKES A SUGGESTION 113 
 
 decoration were probably the most dreadful 
 they have ever been. But when, instead of 
 buying bedsteads of walnut with huge, high 
 headboards full of machine-carved pumpkins 
 and bananas, he went down to New England 
 to buy his mother some old mahogany four- 
 posters, everybody thought he was crazy. 
 That was how he got started buying antiques 
 before hardly anybody else thought of it ; 
 and although he's got all of our houses full of 
 them, and a warehouse full of others we've 
 no place for, he can't stop buying. Well, 
 grandmother lived in that house for twenty- 
 five years until she died ; she loved it, and 
 would never leave it. When father married, 
 he went to live on the North Side he was a 
 very rich old bachelor, then but his mother 
 never would leave the home he had made for 
 her. And since she died, fourteen years ago, 
 he has never let it be touched it is just as 
 she left it. He keeps an old caretaker there, 
 and he goes there quite often when he wants 
 to get away from everybody and be by him- 
 self. It's well, it isn't an intimidating house, 
 like ours on the Lake Shore Drive. I don't 
 really like that house, myself it's too frig 
 and too full of servants. 4 , But do you think 
 that if I asked Ida and Katie to come, with 
 you and Alma, to see me at my West Side
 
 114 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 house, they'd come and get acquainted? 
 You could tell them, if you wanted to, that 
 my father buys old furniture ; and as 'most 
 everybody around there takes lodgers, they 
 might even think that we do. Anything to 
 get them to give me a chance to be friendly 
 in a real way ! " 
 
 " Why, I think that'd be grand ! " Peggy 
 cried, enthusiastically. " But I dunno whin 
 I could come, very well." 
 
 " Couldn't you come for a little while to- 
 morrow afternoon ? Couldn't Polly or Petie 
 'tend the store for an hour or two? And 
 don't the girls get off at four, Saturdays?" 
 
 " I kin ask thim whin they go by, in the 
 mornin'." 
 
 "Will you? Just tell them that Annie 
 asked you to come to see her, and to bring 
 them." 
 
 " Sure I'll try," Peggy promised. 
 
 They discussed Anne's plan in detail, for a 
 while, and then Anne said she must go up 
 and change her waist and start for home. 
 
 " Say, Alma," Peggy asked her when she 
 had said good-night, and the two girls were 
 going towards the street door, " if you see 
 Petie sleuthin* around, will you sind him 
 in?" 
 
 Then, looking up at her clock and discover-
 
 ANNE MAKES A SUGGESTION 115 
 
 ing that it was nearly ten, she went up into 
 the shop, opened the door, and called : 
 
 " Fee-tie ! " 
 
 After listening a moment for an answering 
 call, she returned to the kitchen and opened 
 a cache of her own : in the back of the old 
 wooden wall-clock. Pulling thence a pair of 
 blackened steel spectacle rims, she put them 
 on and went over to the bureau to study the 
 effect in the glass. 
 
 " I got to rade the riot-act to that sleuth," 
 she told herself, comically, " an' I'll nade to 
 look as terrifyin' as I kin." 
 
 She had hardly begun to do this when 
 Petie entered, excitedly. She stood with 
 arms akimbo to receive him as he came down 
 the steps. 
 
 " Is this what you call nine o'clock ? " she 
 demanded, sternly. 
 
 Petie approached her, stepping softly. 
 "This place is watched !" he breathed, in a 
 hoarse whisper. 
 
 "Well, you're goin 1 to be watched, after 
 this ! " Peggy retorted, impatiently. 
 
 " No, honest 1 I tell you you better be- 
 lieve me." 
 
 " I'll belave nothin' ! You git yersilf to 
 bed." 
 
 * there is a man, across the street
 
 n6 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 in a dark doorway, and I tell you he's a 
 detective." 
 
 " Well, you git yersilf into bed an' maybe 
 he won't detect you." 
 
 " Aw ! " With an imprecation of disgust, 
 Petie took his beard from his pocket and 
 started to crawl beneath his cot. 
 
 " Petie ! " cried Peggy, " I said into bed 
 not under it ! " 
 
 Petie backed out. " I was puttin' some- 
 thin' away," he explained, testily. With 
 about four jerks he divested himself of shoes, 
 coat and trousers, and was about to crawl 
 beneath the covers when Peggy seized him. 
 
 " Here ! D' you go to bed like a haythin, 
 widout washin' annythin' ? " 
 
 She collared him, and marched him over 
 to the sink where Petie performed compulsory 
 ablutions to a very limited extent, using the 
 dish-towel. 
 
 " I don't see no use o' washin' yerself at 
 night," he protested, yawning desperately. 
 "Nobody kin see you when you're in bed." 
 
 "The idea!" Peggy cried. "Have you 
 no sinse of daycincy ? " 
 
 It was then that Petie noticed the spectacles. 
 
 " Where'd you git them ? " he demanded. 
 
 " They're what I'm drove to by the sorrers 
 o' bringing up a bad boy like you," Peggy
 
 ANNE MAKES A SUGGESTION 117 
 
 answered, trying to be impressively stern. 
 There were times when Petie made her long 
 for the size and authority of McGarigle not 
 that he did anything so wrong, but that she 
 was so apprehensive of what he might fall 
 into, on Halsted Street. 
 
 She picked up his trousers and disclosed 
 quite shocking holes. She was attempting 
 to fit a patch to one of these when the shop- 
 bell rang and she put her work by, hastily 
 though she forgot to take off the spectacle 
 rims. 
 
 But it wasn't Tom Oliphant who entered.
 
 XII 
 
 In Which Tom Comes to Grief 
 
 IT was a heavily-built, sandy-complex- 
 ioned man, with a chestnut coloured 
 mustache, and the keenest eyes in the 
 world. 
 
 " Good-avenin'," Peggy said. 
 
 " Good-evening. You're Peggy ? " 
 
 " Yes, sir." 
 
 " I came to have a little talk with you." 
 
 " Well, ye're followin' the fashion of most 
 that's come to me imporium this avenin'. 
 But come in maybe me talk ain't all run 
 out." 
 
 He stepped back for her to lead the way, 
 and as he followed her leisurely down the 
 steps he took a quick mental snap-shot of that 
 kitchen living-room. Seating himself, as if 
 perfectly at home, he said, very deliberately : 
 
 " I'm Burns." 
 
 Peggy smiled. "The great detective?" 
 
 "What made you think of that?" he 
 asked. 
 
 "It'd be a wonder," she laughed, "if I 
 could think of annything else. We got a 
 118
 
 TOM COMES TO GRIEF 119 
 
 sleuth in the fam'ly, and he sets you consid'r- 
 able above George Washin'ton. When he 
 hears you been here, an' him aslape under 
 yer nose, I'm thinkin' he'll go out of his 
 mind wid grief." 
 
 " Hm ! And I suppose there isn't any 
 other reason why you should be thinking 
 about detectives ? " 
 
 " Yes," Peggy answered, deliberately ; 
 " there is. There was a fri'nd o' mine in 
 here this avenin' that told me he had a feelin' 
 of bein' watched. An' I had rayson to think 
 it might be so." 
 
 " I'd be careful, if I were you," Burns 
 advised, "how I made friends with a man 
 who thought he was being watched. A man 
 thinks so, usually, because he knows there's 
 a reason why he ought to be." 
 
 " Oh, there's a rayson, all right," Peggy 
 admitted with a mournful little sigh and a 
 shake of her head. " Not why annybody 
 nades to watch him, but why they might 
 think they did." 
 
 "If that's the case, watching won't hurt 
 him." 
 
 " That's what I told him : the closer they 
 watched, the quicker they'd find out he's on 
 the square." 
 
 " What did he say to that ? "
 
 120 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 " He thanked me fer helpin' him to think 
 of it that way said most o' the people that 
 sympathized wid him made him fale like his 
 grievance was the worst ever instead of " 
 
 " Oh, he has a grievance, has he?" 
 
 "Well, I guess you'd call it that. His 
 pa was sint to prison fer somethin' another 
 man done." 
 
 "Almost every man who goes to prison 
 says he goes for something another man 
 did." 
 
 " Do they? Well, if this fella's pa did do 
 it, I hope the boy'll niver find it out. It's bad 
 enough to have yer pa in jail fer what you 
 think he didn' do ; but it'd be tur'ble to have 
 him in fer what you knew he had done 
 wouldn' it?" 
 
 Burns looked narrowly at Peggy ; he was 
 making up his mind how clever she was, and 
 how misleading. 
 
 " What's your friend's name ? " he asked. 
 
 " Oliphant Tom Oliphant." 
 
 " Father a bank cashier down state ? " 
 
 " Yis, sir." 
 
 " Hm ! I followed that case. You see, I 
 do a lot of business in bank protection. 
 That bank wasn't a client of mine, but I got 
 all the data might come in handy some time. 
 I guess Oliphant was the goat, all right."
 
 TOM COMES TO GRIEF 121 
 
 " Well, why didn't you say so ? " Peggy 
 cried. 
 
 "They didn't ask me." 
 
 " An' d' you have to wait fer an invitation 
 to save an innercent man from jail? " 
 
 "You do. Just as, if you're a doctor and 
 know what might save a sick man whom 
 another doctor's tending, you may not inter- 
 fere unless you're asked." 
 
 Peggy stared ; she had never realized 
 that there could be a so-constraining eti- 
 quette. " My Ian' ! " she cried. " I suppose 
 if you seen a man drownin', before you'd 
 jump in to grab him out you'd stan' an' ask 
 him was annybody off huntin' him a life- 
 preserver ? " 
 
 Burns laughed. "I don't think there is 
 any professional etiquette on drowning 
 cases," he answered. " So your friend feels 
 sore about his father ? " 
 
 " Well, wouldn' you ? But the quare 
 thing that happened ! Yiste'day mornin' 
 whin he was jest after tellin' me about it, 
 who should come along, an' give him a job, 
 but Mr. Kimbalton himself ? " 
 
 " Himself ? " echoed Burns, as if puzzled. 
 
 " Yes. It was Mr. Kimbalton he thought 
 could have saved his pa by speakin' an' he 
 wouldn'. 'Twas to see him that the young
 
 122 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 fella come to Chicago ; an' he couldn't git 
 nare him. Then, along he comes fer his 
 mornin' papers an' gives me fri'nd a job." 
 
 Burns nodded. " I see. And does Mr. 
 Kimbalton know who he is ? " 
 
 " He didn't whin he give the job but he 
 foun' out later, I'm thinkin'." 
 
 "And Oliphant thinks it's because of his 
 father's misfortune that he's being watched ? " 
 
 "Why, what else could he think?" Peggy 
 asked, surprised. 
 
 " Have you no idea?" 
 
 There was no doubting the implication in 
 Burns' manner. 
 
 " Why, wha' d' you mane ? " Peggy cried 
 in alarm. " If you could see that young 
 fella, you'd know there ain't no more harm 
 in him than - " 
 
 Burns broke in, quietly but 
 speaking as always with that air of author- 
 ity which compels fascinated attention, " I've 
 been a detective for more than twenty years 
 
 and I've never met up with a bad man yet 
 
 I mean a man who is bad because he likes 
 to be ; what the long-haired professors call 
 ' the criminal type ' ! Men commit crimes 
 when something or other has pushed them 
 past their limit of resistance ; and the limit 
 is near or far according to well, about a
 
 TOM COMES TO GRIEF 123 
 
 thousand things. Take, for example, this 
 dynamite gang that has been giving Mr. 
 Kimbalton so much trouble. Everybody 
 thinks, ' What bloodthirsty desperadoes they 
 must be ! ' Now the queer thing about 
 them is that probably every one of them 
 would faint away if they had to sit in a 
 'scientific' laboratory and watch some pro- 
 fessors carving up a live dog. What is it 
 those dynamiters do ? They take an alarm 
 clock and screw it to a board, along with a 
 dry battery and a coil and a bit of wire, and 
 they connect it up with a few sticks of dyna- 
 mite. They put it in the basement of a 
 building, and wind the clock, and go away. 
 That's all. They're off in some other town, 
 next day, when they read in the paper that 
 the building was blown up and half a dozen 
 men were killed as many homes left father- 
 less and destitute, as well as desolate. They 
 don't realize what they're doing their imag- 
 ination is defective if they could foresee the 
 suffering, they'd never have the nerve to 
 cause it that's why the vivisectors would 
 paralyze them." 
 
 Peggy listened, round-eyed. The man 
 had a narrative power, vivid, dramatic, that 
 would have made him a caliph in times of 
 The Arabian Nights.
 
 124 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 Burns looked at his watch. " Am I keep- 
 ing you up ? " he asked. 
 
 " Oh, no ! I'd be up annyway. I'm 
 waitin' fer fer Mr. Oliphant 1 " 
 
 " Late caller, isn't he ? " Burns observed, 
 as if it didn't really matter. 
 
 Peggy blushed. " It ain't jest a call," she 
 said. " He's comin' here to 1'ave some- 
 thin' " 
 
 Burns studied her face, searchingly in- 
 quisitorially. 
 
 "To leave something?" he echoed. 
 
 " Yis, sir a package ; he's gittin' it fer a 
 fri'nd, an* he had no place to kape it, so I 
 told him he could 1'ave it here." 
 
 Peggy was as near perplexing the cele- 
 brated detective as anybody had come in a 
 long time. He knew she was a shrewd, 
 worldly-wise little person, as "chain-light- 
 ning quick " as anything on the West Side. 
 He didn't believe she could be ignorant of 
 the nature of Tom Oliphant's errand, unsus- 
 picious of what she was about to receive into 
 her house ; and yet ! If she were feign- 
 ing innocence, she was doing it with a con- 
 summate art which upset all his theories. 
 He had been called to the telephone about 
 eight o'clock, and told by some one, who said 
 he was a loyal workman at Kimbalton's, that
 
 TOM COMES TO GRIEF 125 
 
 if Burns or one of his aides would be at 
 Peggy's News Emporium on Halsted Street, 
 two doors north of Neeley's, that evening 
 after ten, the man (Oliphant) who was to 
 " put over " the third dynamiting at Kimbal- 
 ton's, on Saturday, would be found " with 
 the goods on him." Valuable clues too 
 often came this way for Burns to disregard 
 one that might be such ; so he sent a man 
 over, got a report that Tom Oliphant had 
 been there and gone, and another report that 
 Mr. Kimbalton's daughter was in the place ; 
 whereupon, the chief went in person to the 
 scene of so much probable action. That the 
 Oliphant boy was being used as a tool by 
 the suspected malcontents seemed to Burns 
 extremely probable ; but whether Peggy was 
 their accomplice or the boy's dupe, he could 
 not make up his mind. 
 
 He was still doubtful, when Tom come in. 
 Burns, hearing the shop-bell ring, stepped 
 aside so that Tom could not see him until 
 fairly in the kitchen, but so that he could see 
 if Peggy made any attempt to signal him. 
 
 " I hope I haven't kept you up too awfully 
 late," Tom apologized to Peggy. " It was at 
 the end of the world that place. I think 
 McNabb had his nerve with him." 
 
 He came down the steps. Under his arm
 
 126 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 was an oblong box, wrapped in paper and 
 tied with a stout string. 
 
 The boy looked startled when he saw 
 Burns, and betrayed his recognition of the 
 detective. 
 
 " You know who I am ? " Burns said, 
 stepping forward. 
 
 " I've had you pointed out to me as Burns." 
 
 "By whom?" 
 
 " By Mr. McNabb." 
 
 Burns showed surprise at Tom's ready 
 answer. 
 
 " Friend of yours ? " 
 
 " An acquaintance." 
 
 "Hml What have we here?" touching 
 the box. 
 
 " I don't know," Tom answered. 
 
 " Where did you get it ? " 
 
 " I'm keeping it for some one " 
 
 "For whom?" 
 
 "I don't know but I think it " Tom 
 
 checked himself suddenly. There was an 
 insolent disbelief in Burns' look. The de- 
 tective suspected somebody of something. 
 Tom would be careful how he incriminated 
 McNabb on a supposition. Once these de- 
 tectives got an idea in their minds, it was 
 hard to dislodge ; and not every innocent 
 man can prove his innocence !
 
 TOM COMES TO GRIEF 127 
 
 " You think what ? " 
 
 " I don't know," Tom answered, with his 
 first show of sullenness. 
 
 Burns took the box, broke the string with 
 a quick wrench, lifted the cover, and took out 
 an alarm clock, a dry battery, a coil, and a 
 half dozen sticks of dynamite. 
 
 Peggy gave a little, stifled cry of horror. 
 Tom stared at the stuff uncomprehend- 
 ingly. 
 
 "You don't know what these are for, I 
 suppose ? " Burns asked, with a sneer. 
 
 " No, I don't ! Of course you don't believe 
 me 1 How could I expect any one to believe 
 that I don't know what I went for, or who 
 sent me ? I'm in for it that's all ! " 
 
 "It's the truth he's tellin' you I" Peggy 
 cried, catching Burns by the arm imploringly. 
 "It was me got him to do it tellin' him 
 mos' like it was a Chris'mas present. He 
 didn* know " 
 
 " You didn't know," Burns corrected, 
 pushing her gently away. 
 
 "It's no use, Peggy 1 " Tom cried, savagely. 
 " They've got me it's, a frame-up. I haven't 
 done anything but I wish to God I had ! I 
 wish I'd given you," to Burns, " a run for 
 your money ! Good-bye, Peggy and thank 
 you."
 
 128 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 " Thank me ? " sobbed Peggy. " You 
 ought to curse the day you seen me ! " 
 
 As Burns and Tom went out, they passed 
 Polly coming in. 
 
 " What did he get pinched for ? " she asked, 
 curiously. 
 
 Peggy did not answer. 
 
 Polly went into the little bedroom and lit 
 the gas. 
 
 Still Peggy stood at the foot of the steps 
 and looked towards the street door. 
 
 " I knew you'd get in wrong some time 
 makin' friends with all the queers that come 
 along," Polly called from within. 
 
 Peggy went wearily up into the shop, 
 locked the door, and turned out the light. 
 Then she came back into the kitchen, turned 
 out the light there, and dragged herself 
 droopingly across the dark room towards the 
 bedroom door. 
 
 The instant she had got inside, Petie raised 
 his head to reconnoitre ; then grabbed his 
 clothes and shoes. Scrambling into them as 
 he went, and trembling with excitement, he 
 crept stealthily up into the shop, opened the 
 door gently, and disappeared into Halsted 
 Street.
 
 XIII 
 
 In Which Tom Is Enwrapped In Ltixury 
 
 "^ TOU understand, Oliphant," Burns 
 |j said when he and Tom left Peggy's, 
 JL " that you are not under arrest. I 
 will, of course, have you arrested at any mo- 
 ment that you demand it. But if you are will- 
 ing to consider yourself my well, my guest 
 for a while perhaps only for to-night I'd 
 greatly prefer it. What do you say ? " 
 
 " I wish I knew what Spanish Inquisition 
 business you are up to 1 " Tom cried, hotly. 
 " But I don't see what I can do about it ! 
 I'm up against it, whatever way I turn. Go 
 ahead. Do what you like. You've got my 
 finish framed, and I can't see what difference 
 it makes to me how I get it." 
 
 "You're talking wild, Oliphant," the de- 
 tective said, quietly. " This is a country 
 where every man is innocent, in the eyes of 
 the law, until he's proved guilty. I have no 
 reason to believe that ever, in my whole ca- 
 reer as a detective, I have prosecuted, let 
 alone got conviction for, an innocent person. 
 129
 
 130 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 I hope I am not going to begin that kind of 
 sorry business now." 
 
 " That's a grand thing to tell me 1 " Tom 
 retorted, savagely. " Look at my dad 1 " 
 
 " Did I prosecute your dad, or have any- 
 thing to do with his conviction ? " 
 
 " No ; but your boss did ! " 
 
 " I have no boss." 
 
 "Well, this man Kimbalton that you're 
 working for now." 
 
 They walked along in silence for a few mo- 
 ments. It was a snowy night, and a sharp 
 north wind was blowing in their faces. Burns 
 made no effort to restrain Tom or to prevent 
 his escape. But even Tom, unused as he was 
 to police methods, knew how futile it would 
 be to try to elude this man. Burns might let 
 him do it ; but in five minutes there would 
 be a police drag-net out that he could not 
 hope to evade. So, although he could not 
 guess whither he might be going, Tom went 
 unresistingly. 
 
 As if he had not heard Tom's last remark, 
 Burns said, presently : 
 
 " Where d'you live ? " 
 
 " Antlers Hotel, on Madison." 
 
 " Any reason why you'd like to stop there 
 on our way ? " 
 
 "No." '
 
 WRAPPED IN L UXUR Y 131 
 
 " All right." 
 
 They turned west at Monroe Street. It 
 was a little easier to talk, here. 
 
 " Boy," began Burns, " I'm going to tell 
 you something : I never saw Kimbalton until 
 a week ago after the second dynamiting at 
 his place. But I know a good deal about 
 that case in which your father was sent up ; 
 and if my long experience in bank protection 
 serves me right, your father was only a fool 
 not a knave. But I don't believe Kimbal- 
 ton knew any of the facts ; all he knew, or 
 knows, is what the president told him. He 
 knows the president probably likes him, 
 personally ; he doesn't know your dad and 
 there you are ! That's human nature, boy : 
 if somebody is a rascal, it can't be that pleas- 
 ant person you know it must be that other 
 whom you haven't seen. Kimbalton's a 
 shrewd man about some things I very ; 
 but nobody's shrewd about everything. He 
 was the heaviest creditor of that bank in the 
 corn belt ; somebody had been peculating 
 and speculating ain't it funny more people 
 don't see how near alike those words are ? 
 and something had to go through. If Kim- 
 balton had known your dad and not the other 
 fellow, he'd have fought the other way. I'd 
 like to take the matter up with him, and tell
 
 132 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 him what I think. But you've kind of closed 
 the door on that, I guess. I don't mind tell- 
 ing you, boy, I'm sorry you let McNabb make 
 a tool of you. What's the matter ? Does it 
 run in your family to be dupes ? " 
 
 By all the laws of Burns' experience this 
 should have made the boy very angry ; made 
 him cry out that he was no dupe and then 
 go on, in his passionate desire to establish his 
 intelligence, to incriminate himself, and others. 
 Instead, he made no reply ; but seemed lost 
 in his own bitter reflections. 
 
 Presently they made another turn, and in 
 a few moments stopped at an old dwelling ; 
 it was a detached house, of brick, with a 
 white-stone front, and even in the blustering 
 night showed sharp differences from its neigh- 
 bours. They evinced their fallen estate : 
 their wooden steps sagged ; their front doors 
 bespoke hard usage ; their sidewalks and in- 
 finitesimal bits of front yard handkerchief 
 size had a long-unshovelled look ; their 
 windows were either rakish or sullen, like the 
 two types of hard, ungenteel poverty they 
 housed. This place to whose door they 
 mounted was scrupulously kept as if the New 
 England housewifely spirit of Lucy Kimbal- 
 ton still directed its maintenance. 
 
 Burns rang. An elderly woman came to
 
 WRAPPED IN L UXUR Y 133 
 
 the door. Burns nodded to her. It was as 
 if she expected him. 
 
 " This is the young man Mr. Kimbalton 
 'phoned you would stay here to-night," he 
 said. " Make him as comfortable as you 
 can." 
 
 " Yes, sir." 
 
 " Good-night, Oliphant. Ask for anything 
 you want. I'll see you to-morrow." 
 
 " Would you care to go right to your 
 room, sir ? " the caretaker asked Tom, when 
 the door had closed on Burns' retreating fig- 
 ure. 
 
 " If you please." 
 
 She led the way up the stairs. The house 
 was lighted with gas, and there was a newell 
 post at the foot of the stairs, as well as a sort 
 of hanging lantern on a level with the tran- 
 som of the front door and illumining the 
 house number thereon ; both were of white 
 ground glass, etched, and had dangling 
 prisms of dazzling cleanness. The door into 
 the front parlour stood open, and Tom got a 
 glimpse, as he mounted, of a delightfully 
 quaint room. There was only one gas-jet 
 burning in the chandelier with its tall crystal 
 globes shaped like old candle-protectors, and 
 he had but a glance within ; but that glance 
 revealed an antiquated landscape wall-paper,
 
 134 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 in tones of soft grays and whites, and a gen- 
 eral impression of good old mahogany. 
 
 Certainly there could hardly have been a 
 strange house which conveyed less sug- 
 gestion of sinister intent. The guest room to 
 which Tom was shown was the large front 
 room on the top floor the second above the 
 parlour and there was a glowing hard-coal 
 fire in the small iron grate beneath the white 
 marble mantel ; this, the housekeeper ex- 
 plained, because the furnace heat did not al- 
 ways " come up good." There was a huge 
 four-poster bed, with a tasselled dimity tester 
 and a valance, and a crocheted counterpane 
 with knotted fringe. Tom had never been in 
 a room so full of charm. Candles burned in 
 the tall glass protectors on the mantel-shelf. 
 There was a chintz-covered easy chair before 
 the fire. The walls had a paper of impalpa- 
 ble shades, that gave the effect of plumy 
 branches waving in a mild breeze. There 
 was a pitcher of water and a night candle, 
 with matches, by his bedside. On the wash- 
 stand was every requisite for the toilet ; and 
 lying across the bottom of the bed, whose 
 covers were turned back ready for him to get 
 in, was a nightshirt. 
 
 To a homesick boy fresh from The Antlers, 
 with its single rooms at twenty-five cents a
 
 WRAPPED IN LUXURY 135 
 
 night, this place would have been all but un- 
 nerving in any event. As it was, he could 
 only with difficulty keep up a show of com- 
 posure in the presence of the elderly woman 
 who was so eager to make him comfortable. 
 When he had sufficiently assured her that 
 he wanted nothing, she withdrew. Tom sat 
 down to think. This was the twentieth cen- 
 tury ; it was not possible, he tried to convince 
 himself, that men, even with so great power 
 as Andrew Kimbalton's wealth gave him, 
 should seize and shut up, without accounting 
 to any one, a poor wretch who had displeased 
 them. Those times were in the darker ages. 
 He must be calm. At least there was one 
 stout-hearted little creature who knew that 
 Burns had taken her new friend and would 
 not easily be denied an accounting for him. 
 So this was Kimbalton's house, was it? 
 What was his need of such a place ? Tom 
 looked about him with a grim amusement 
 that his apprehension could not quench. He 
 had been as ardent a reader as most boys of 
 the historical romances that abound in dun- 
 geons and moats and keeps and warders, and 
 seneschals, and trembling prisoners who were 
 dispatched as their captor ordered, and none 
 that loved them ever knew in what dark, rat- 
 infested hole their bones mildewed. Was it
 
 136 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 possible that twentieth century robber-barons 
 had their condemned put to death in mahog- 
 any four-posters ? 
 
 Thus and thus Tom tried to laugh away 
 his fears. Presently he got up, tiptoed across 
 the room, and noiselessly opened the door. 
 There was not a sound in the house. Should 
 he try to escape ? What would be the use ? 
 Burns could get him back, no matter where 
 he got to. Still, just to satisfy himself what 
 was the intent towards him, he thought he 
 would go down through those pleasantly- 
 lighted halls, and see if any one would stop 
 him. They would hardly shoot. Tom had 
 sturdy sense enough to know that Kimbal- 
 ton's minions would not do that, save in self- 
 defense. He went down, boldly though his 
 heart was beating wildly ; no one impeded 
 him. He opened the front door ; no one 
 seemed to care. Then the folly of running 
 away came to him : it would be like a con- 
 fession of guilt. He crept up the stairs again, 
 and into his room, and went to bed. The 
 morrow must bring what it would. 
 
 And Burns' man, on guard in the silent 
 house, listened and smiled. His instructions 
 were, if Tom went out to shadow him and 
 see whom he warned. 
 
 In the morning, Tom was served with
 
 WRAPPED IN L UXUR Y 137 
 
 grape-fruit and oatmeal and bacon and eggs, 
 toast and coffee, at Lucy Kimbalton's dull- 
 finished mahogany table set with white doilies 
 and blue-and-white china. After breakfast, 
 he sat by an open fire in the back parlour, and 
 read the morning papers. There was a tele- 
 phone on the wall one of the earliest in- 
 stalled in Chicago homes and he wished, as 
 he looked at it, that he knew how to send 
 Peggy word he was safe so far. But he 
 could think of no one to call except Neeley's ; 
 and he wouldn't ask her to go in there. As 
 the morning wore on and no one came, he 
 buried himself in " A Tale of Two Cities."
 
 XIV 
 
 In Which Tom Makes a Sudden Decision 
 
 IT was two-thirty on Saturday afternoon 
 before Burns came back smiling. 
 Somehow, a report had got out that 
 Burns had "nabbed" the Kimbalton dyna- 
 miter. It might have come from Peggy, or 
 her household : if they had told the police- 
 man on their beat, it would not have taken 
 long for word to reach Desplaines Street sta- 
 tion and the hungry police reporters. At 
 any rate, Burns' office was in a state of siege 
 by young men not with note-books ; oh, 
 dear, no ! fancy a reporter deigning to take 
 notes ! but with news-sense as keen as hounds' 
 scent, and minds full of impressionistic phrases 
 with which, after all, facts would have very 
 little relation. And Kimbalton's down-town 
 and West Side offices were in the same state 
 of siege. Even his house, where the veriest 
 "cub" knew better than to look for Andrew 
 Kimbalton after 6 : 30 A. M., till towards 
 evening, was lightly bombarded ; but the 
 English butler, at the door and 'phone, gave 
 the impression that dynamiters could hardly 
 138
 
 A SUDDEN DECISION 139 
 
 be expected to interest that august house- 
 hold ; certainly, if any had been caught, no 
 one in milord's castle had condescended to 
 mention the fact or words to that effect. 
 
 Burns had laughed good-humouredly at 
 the besieging squad. 
 
 " What did the report say I did with him ? " 
 he teased. " Tried, convicted, executed and 
 buried him myself, in the dead o' night ? 
 Boys ! boys ! what's come over you ? If I 
 had a dynamiter, where would I be keeping 
 him?" 
 
 " That's what we want to know ! " they 
 cried. 
 
 Whereupon Burns laughed more merrily 
 even than before. "Why," he said, as he 
 was retiring to his private office, " you sur- 
 prise me. Go back and talk to your law de- 
 partments or read history. The Bastille 
 fell a hundred and some years ago. If we 
 arrest and confine men now, it is on warrant, 
 and a matter of public record ; there are no 
 secret dungeons for offenders against the 
 great. Boys ! boys ! " 
 
 This was true ; but not one of the " boys " 
 believed it was the whole truth. They took 
 themselves off, and each one strove to make 
 the others think he believed Burns and had 
 dropped the story; then tried to elude the
 
 140 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 others and do a little Sherlocking. It would 
 be something in a fellow's cap to outwit 
 Burns and " scoop " the dynamite story for 
 his paper; yes, and something in all his 
 weekly envelopes thereafter ! 
 
 And Burns, who knew exactly what the 
 boys meant to do, was smiling because he 
 had been what he called " a little careful " in 
 coming here, and he couldn't help feeling 
 mildly amused at the whole situation. 
 
 The amusement did not lessen when he 
 discovered Tom basking before an open fire 
 and vicariously suffering the terrors of the 
 French Revolution. 
 
 " Well," he asked, as Tom closed the book, 
 " how goes it ? " 
 
 " I have been physically comfortable," the 
 boy answered, curtly. " But if you have 
 come to consult me, I prefer jail. There, I 
 know what I'm up against ; here, I don't." 
 
 Burns shrugged. "As you like," he said, 
 indifferently and passed on through the 
 room and down the basement stairs to the 
 kitchen, to speak to the caretaker, and to the 
 man who had been on guard. 
 
 From the front basement Burns hailed 
 Kimbalton when he saw the latter approach- 
 ing, and led the way to the rear. Andrew 
 Kimbalton was no stranger to that back
 
 A SUDDEN DECISION 141 
 
 kitchen with its big range recessed beneath 
 a brick chimney-place ; its braided rugs ; its 
 dresser full of blue and white, of pewter, and 
 of copper lustre ; its plants in the west win- 
 dow ; and its sink above which the shining 
 tin dipper hung. At any of his homes, the 
 kitchen was strange territory, tyrannized over 
 by his foreign chef. But when he came to 
 this house, Kimbalton seldom failed to visit 
 the kitchen, and to drink from the tin dipper : 
 a homely pastime elsewhere denied him. 
 
 There he and Burns conferred while Tom 
 sat up-stairs, and wondered what was going 
 to happen to him. And as he wondered, 
 suddenly there came to him one of those in- 
 explicable swift changes of purpose which 
 come, at times, to us all : he had given up 
 without a fight ; he had not made even a 
 show of resistance to tyranny. The man 
 who had jailed his father was now going to 
 jail him likewise without cause. Could 
 worse have befallen father and son at the 
 hands of one overlord in those times the 
 French Revolution rose to put an end to ? 
 Of what stuff was he made that he should 
 bow his head unresistingly to the power of 
 money and say that he was impotent against 
 it ? The rage in him that had been sullen 
 leaped, now, in sudden flame. He stepped
 
 142 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST ^ 
 
 out into the front hall. The caretaker had 
 brought down from his room and hung on 
 the hall-tree his hat and coat The very act 
 was a taunt ; as if they knew he dared not 
 leave. He seized them, opened the door, 
 and was away, his back turned upon The 
 Antlers and on Halsted Street, when Burns 
 came up-stairs to tell him that he apologized 
 for detaining him, hoped he had not suffered 
 any great inconvenience, and begged that he 
 would consider his movements unrestricted. 
 
 " It's a bit queer," Burns observed to Kim- 
 balton ; " for when I went down-stairs, he 
 was sullen, but passive as if he had figured 
 it all out and assured himself how little good 
 it would do him to run. I didn't say any- 
 thing to him didn't want to until I had seen 
 how you felt about letting him go. I can't 
 quite get his sudden shift ; and I'm not as 
 sure about him as I felt five minutes ago. 
 This is a sharp game we're up against, Kim- 
 balton. Those fellows are not bunglers 
 they know something of strategy. They in- 
 sist that this is war openly declared, and to 
 be fought to a finish. Well ! the finish is not 
 in sight yet. I'll get that boy back. And 
 next time we'll hold on to him." 
 
 Before Tom had gone a mile, the drag-net 
 was out for him.
 
 XV 
 In Which Anne Kimbalton Wins a Point 
 
 KIMBALTON and Burns were still in 
 conference in the library when the 
 front door-bell rang, and the care- 
 taker asked what she should do. 
 
 " Open ; but don't let any one in," Kim- 
 balton gave order ; and he and Burns hushed 
 their conversation so they could hear what 
 was said at the door. 
 
 " Why, it's Anne ! " her father exclaimed, 
 jumping to his feet. " My dear girl, what 
 brings you here ? " 
 
 " I why, I have an appointment here," 
 she answered. " I haven't seen you since I 
 made it. I never dreamed it might be in- 
 truding on you." 
 
 " Of course not, dear. But it just happens 
 that I and I isn't it a bit extraordinary for 
 you to have appointments here?" 
 
 She laughed. " It's like a French farce 
 only perfectly respectable 1 I discover you 
 in a business conference. You surprise me 
 in an adventure in philanthropy."
 
 144 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 She described to him the occasion for her 
 coming. He was skeptical about the pos- 
 sible results. 
 
 " Look at the money I've spent in what 
 they call Welfare Work. And who thanked 
 me for it? You say those girls have no 
 place to go, evenings. What's the matter 
 with those great recreation rooms fitted up 
 at such expense gymnasium, and every- 
 thing?" 
 
 " These girls don't work for you." 
 
 " But the girls who do work for me hun- 
 dreds of 'em don't go there, either. Pale- 
 faced fellows, with what that newspaper critic 
 calls 'lyric hair,' come around and tell me 
 that I ought to be ashamed because the girls 
 I pay wages to dance in saloon halls. So I 
 build them a big hall to dance in fit it up 
 in great style and do they come to it ? 
 They do not ! I think it's bully of you to 
 think this pretty little scheme out, and try 
 to help. And of course, you can go ahead 
 with it if you like. But I'm afraid you're 
 going to be a disappointed young Samaritan. 
 Give 'em your penny a day, or your dollar, 
 and let 'em spend it. But don't try to uplift 
 them because I can tell you, after an ex- 
 pensive experience, they don't want to be 
 uplifted."
 
 ANNE WINS A POINT 145 
 
 Anne's eyes twinkled with merriment. 
 " The sodden wretches ! " she cried. " They 
 shall perish in their mire of unenlightenment. 
 I'll send them away, when they come. And 
 then, will you do something for me ? " 
 
 " Why, of course if I can," he agreed ; 
 but he was rather puzzled, because usually 
 Anne had more of his pertinacity. 
 
 " There's a performance of ' Die Gotter- 
 dammerung ' at the Opera, to-night," she said. 
 " It's not our night ; but I want to go. Won't 
 you take me ? " 
 
 He stared. "You know I hate opera," he 
 reminded her ; " makes me go to sleep. 
 And that one of all others ! lasts all night, 
 and not a tune in it. Anne, dear ! " 
 
 She looked shocked. " Oh, dadda ! Why, 
 music-lovers are transported by it." 
 
 " Humph ! " 
 
 " And I've invited such an interesting man 
 to luncheon to-morrow. He has promised to 
 talk to us about the Niebelungen trilogy. 
 What will he think, when he learns that you 
 wouldn't even go to-night ? " 
 
 Kimbalton's expression of despair would 
 have wrought sympathy in any one but his 
 daughter. 
 
 " I can't help it, Anne ! " he cried. " But 
 that stuff just doesn't get me. When I go
 
 146 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 after a good time, I want to laugh. Harry 
 Lauder for me, and dog take Wagner ! " 
 
 She was struggling with the twitching 
 corners of her mouth. " Isn't there any one 
 I can uplift ? " she wailed, disconsolately. 
 
 He looked his reproach full at her for a 
 second ; then pounced, as if she were a little 
 girl and he would catch and soundly spank 
 her. 
 
 " Oh, all right 1 " he cried. " My hands 
 are up, my weapons down. Go ahead with 
 your elevating only don't take advantage 
 of a defenseless fellow that has surrendered. 
 Elevate what you can find to struggle with 
 but please spare father ! " 
 
 And, grinning with delight at her victory, 
 he withdrew to the library and closed behind 
 him the folding doors.
 
 XVI 
 
 In Which Anne Makes a Frank Declaration 
 
 IT was Anne herself who opened the door 
 when the girls rang. She was dismayed 
 not to see Peggy. 
 
 " At the las' minute she couldn' get 
 away," Alma explained. " Neither o' them 
 kids was there to tend the store. I wanted 
 her to let me stay, but she wouldn't. She 
 said she'd be along pretty soon ; that Polly 
 had promised to get back by four, but she 
 must have forgot to keep watch of the time." 
 
 She could not tell Anne, then, how at the 
 last minute Ida had wanted to back out, and 
 it had needed all Peggy's diplomacy to get 
 her to come. Katie was naturally acquies- 
 cent, just as Ida was naturally suspicious and 
 difficult. 
 
 Ida was not favourably impressed with 
 these surroundings ; Alma could see that, 
 and could sympathize with it. She herself 
 would have been chilled and put on the de- 
 fensive by them had she not been so com- 
 pletely won to Anne, so convinced of her 
 sweet sincerity, and so eager to help her.
 
 148 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 Peggy had told the girls that morning, as 
 they passed on their way to work, that Annie 
 wanted to ask their advice ; that she was 
 getting up something, and wanted their help. 
 Annie's address was reasonably reassuring 
 to Ida, but the air of the house was not : the 
 bitterly proud Russian girl scented benevo- 
 lence, and was ready to decline it resentfully, 
 even with wrath. 
 
 Anne could feel this defiance, and at first it 
 discouraged her ; then it put her on her mettle. 
 
 " I had such a good time at Peggy's, last 
 night," she said, by way of explaining her 
 invitation, " that I thought it would be nice 
 if we had a little club or something so we 
 could meet regular, and get up things, and 
 all that. Sometimes we could go to Peggy's, 
 and sometimes we could come here. What 
 do you think?" 
 
 "It costs money to do things," Ida has- 
 tened to answer ; " and we can't pay fer fun. 
 And it takes time. I know I ain't got time 
 to belong to no club. Katie kin speak fer 
 herself an' Alma." 
 
 "Would it be a pleasure club?" Katie 
 asked, her slow suspicions aroused by fear of 
 something educational. 
 
 Anne smiled as she remembered her father. 
 " Oh, of course," she said.
 
 A FRANK DECLARATION 149 
 
 " I'm obliged," Ida broke in, abruptly ; 
 " but I ain't got time fer pleasure." 
 
 "Well," Anne interposed, "maybe your 
 pleasure and Katie's wouldn't be just the 
 same. You like to sit around and talk 
 don't you ? That doesn't cost anything ; but 
 it's nice to have some place you can go and 
 meet people you like isn't it ? " 
 
 "When I want to do that, I can go to 
 Peggy's. What do I need of another place ? 
 Of a club?" 
 
 " I I don't know," Anne faltered ; " that's 
 what I wanted to ask you." 
 
 Alma yearned to step into the breach, but 
 didn't know just how and was afraid to ven- 
 ture lest she make it wider. 
 
 Ida rose from her seat on Lucy Kimbal- 
 ton's haircloth-covered sofa with the lovely 
 lines. 
 
 " Excuse me," she said ; " I don't know 
 who you are, ner what you're after. But 
 there's something queer about this, and it 
 don't strike me right. You're not our sort, 
 and you can't understand us. Peggy ought 
 to of known that. I guess you mean all 
 right ; an' maybe Katie, here, might be in- 
 
 teresfed in your scheme. But I Well, 
 
 if I get out, perhaps you'll get on better." 
 
 She made a move towards the door, but
 
 150 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 Anne laid a pleading hand on her, restrain- 
 ingly. 
 
 "Wait!" she begged. "You're right! 
 There is something queer about this, and it 
 won't do. I tried it because I thought maybe 
 I could make you like me, and trust me, 
 if we could get acquainted this way. We 
 can't I see. I'm Anne Kimbalton " Katie 
 gasped, but Ida was less surprised ; she had 
 not suspected just this, but was prepared for 
 
 it in kind if not in degree "and I 
 
 What can I say? I feel as if I ought to 
 apologize for myself, and yet as if, if I were 
 in your place and you were in mine, I'd feel 
 that no apology could be made. I have 
 been very not deceitful, but not " 
 
 " On the level," Alma suggested, as Anne 
 hesitated for a word. 
 
 " Yes that's it : not on the level. Now 
 let me be plain and frank. You girls work 
 hard, and you don't get half enough for it 
 you go without the necessities of life. I 
 don't work at all, and I have everything. 
 I don't blame you if you hate me ; if our 
 places were changed, I'm sure I should hate 
 you. But if I could only learn how, I'd love 
 to do something to make things if not right, 
 at least more nearly so than they are now. 
 I'm in earnest, with all my heart. But what
 
 A FRANK DECLARATION 151 
 
 can I do? If you were in my place, Ida, and 
 I were in yours, what would you do ? " 
 
 " Raise wages," Ida replied, briefly ; but 
 she was perceptibly softened. 
 
 " I can't raise your wages," Anne retorted, 
 "because I don't pay them." 
 
 " No ; but you, or yer father, pay hundreds 
 o' girls. Do they all get all they earn ? Or 
 could they be helped so they could earn 
 more?" 
 
 " I don't know," Anne faltered. 
 
 "That's the place fer you to begin," Ida 
 reminded. 
 
 " I'll try," Anne promised. " But of course 
 it is father's business his and the other stock- 
 holders' and I don't know how much I can 
 do. If it were all his, you see, it might be 
 different. He has more money than he wants 
 now ; he could well afford to earn far less. 
 But there are others interested and they are 
 not satisfied ! Why, even Peggy told me 
 that Polly never gets through counting up 
 what she could have if Peggy didn't give 
 away nearly four dollars a year ! There isn't 
 one of us who can go very far without con- 
 sulting others. What I can do is to use my 
 own allowance. And that's what I'm trying 
 to find out how to do so it will really help. 
 But you see how it is ! There are a good
 
 152 777^ PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 many girls who feel as I do, and there are 
 so many girls who feel as you do. I don't 
 blame you I'd do just the same but there 
 we are ! If you won't let me do anything 
 for you, won't you be my friend and help me 
 do for others ? " 
 
 She held out her hand, appealingly, and 
 Ida grasped it. " I'm with you on that," she 
 agreed. 
 
 Alma smiled. She knew that Peggy had 
 passed Anne on to her as one that might be 
 helped ; and she had chosen, rather, to join 
 the helpers and make Ida the beneficiary. 
 Now, here was Ida on their side and they 
 were all looking for some one to be kind 
 to ! If Katie were not careful, she would be 
 borne down by kindnesses because she was 
 the only willing recipient. 
 
 Anne, encouraged, launched into explana- 
 tions and in the midst of them, the door- 
 bell rang. 
 
 " It's Peggy," Alma said 
 
 And it was a breathless Peggy.
 
 XVII 
 
 In Which Peggy Gets Into Further Complica- 
 tions With Dynamite 
 
 " "W~ AN' sakes 1 " she cried, when Anne 
 admitted her. "Who is yer dago 
 -* < fri'nd, an' what has he got agin 
 yer havin' visitors?" 
 
 " ' Dago ' ? " Anne echoed, blankly. 
 
 "Yes out in front. He was down in the 
 area way whin he seen me, an' he come 
 runnin' out. ' Where you go ? ' he says. I 
 didn' think it was anny o' his business but 
 then again, it might be so I told him. ' No ! ' 
 he says. 4 No ! ' an' grabbed holt of me. 
 That made me mad. ' I was ast here,' I says, 
 ' an' I'll have no janitor kapein' me out be- 
 cause I didn' come in me autymobile.' So 
 I put down me head an' charged like a goat 
 you don't sell papers on Halsted twelve 
 years an' 1'arn nothin' an' here I am." 
 
 Anne's face had blanched almost at Peggy's 
 first mention of a "dago." She knew a good 
 deal about her father's difficulties ; about why 
 he was at that moment conferring with Burns. 
 And she knew that no Italian could have a 
 "53
 
 154 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 reason for stopping Peggy except it were a 
 reason that demanded inquiry. 
 
 Without waiting even for Peggy to finish 
 her amused account of how she came to the 
 party, Anne flung open the folding doors, 
 and, trying to speak steadily but to lose no 
 time, said : 
 
 " Mr. Burns, there is a suspicious Italian 
 out in front. He tried to stop Peggy." 
 
 Both men jumped to their feet. Their 
 minds were full of dynamite terrors, and 
 Anne's tone was very tense. Even although 
 it had never occurred to them that there 
 could be danger here, or that their disturb- 
 ers were aware there was such a place as 
 
 this, still ! All this in a flash of two 
 
 quick minds. And then in another flash, 
 almost quicker than lightning, another com- 
 mon thought : Tom ! 
 
 " Don't move till I tell you ! " 
 
 Burns went down the basement stairs at 
 what seemed like a flying leap ; wrenched 
 open the front basement door ; thrust his 
 hand into a heap of rubbish which his very 
 slight acquaintance with the caretaker's meth- 
 ods made instantly suspicious ; and drew out 
 a gas-pipe bomb attached to a ten-minute 
 fuse which was not lighted. 
 
 The speed at which such a brain works in
 
 155 
 
 such a moment is incomparable ; nothing in 
 all the marvels of nature or science is a par- 
 allel. 
 
 Burns made calculations on the likelihood 
 of there being other bombs in other places, 
 with fuses burning ; he made calculations on 
 taking time to alarm the household and tell 
 them to give like alarm to those in neigh- 
 bouring houses, and in a flash like that of a 
 high-speed camera shutter, he had decided 
 everything. If the man was there when 
 Peggy came in a minute ago, it was be- 
 cause he had not lighted his fuse once that 
 is done, they never tarry. And even if he 
 had sneaked in somewhere and lighted one 
 since trying to stop her, there would be some 
 minutes yet before it could burn to the cap ; 
 because the dynamiters seldom leave them- 
 selves less than ten minutes for their get- 
 away. Lives were safe for long enough to 
 permit of his trying to find the Italian. 
 
 All this he formulated without a pause in 
 his catapult motion. Also, that the man he 
 sought would almost certainly not stay in 
 sight, if waiting. He had tried to save 
 Peggy he knew Tom well enough for that ! 
 The fellow would hide until he saw Peggy 
 come out. So Burns turned sharply, and 
 was back up-stairs again almost before the
 
 156 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 astonished group had grasped the paralyz- 
 ing situation. 
 
 " Go out, Peggy ! " he ordered. " Stand 
 on the steps look about you see if you 
 can't get him out of hiding to speak to you 
 again. Then hold him somehow till I get 
 him. The rest of you can go out the back 
 way if you are nervous but I don't think 
 there's any danger yet." 
 
 Even as he spoke, he was urging Peggy 
 towards the front door. 
 
 " It's up to you," he said, briefly. " Get 
 that dago." 
 
 She opened the front door and went slowly 
 down the steps ; then paused irresolutely at 
 their foot. Her man was not in sight. She 
 started south, as if going home, and trotted 
 briskly for a hundred and fifty feet or more. 
 When she wheeled, sharply, she saw him. 
 
 Little Peg had her own pretty arts of 
 strategy like those she had used to keep 
 Alma from her desperate purpose but they 
 were in nowise adequate to an occasion like 
 this. She had not the faintest idea how to 
 calculate the probable movements of a dyna- 
 miter what he might do to her or, if she 
 made a false move, to others. All she could 
 comprehend was that Burns had said it was 
 "up to" her to "get that dago." She
 
 FURTHER COMPLICATIONS 157 
 
 walked back, thinking hard, trying to decide 
 what she ought to do. She looked as if she 
 had forgotten something and was returning 
 for it. The Italian saw her and drew back. 
 Peggy's face was a picture of despair. But 
 she had perfectly fulfilled her mission : 
 Burns, watching, saw an Italian in that 
 neighbourhood a familiar type and by the 
 expression on Peggy's face knew him for the 
 Italian. In a moment he was out and had 
 him. 
 
 "Come in, Peggy," he said. "We want 
 you."
 
 XVIII 
 
 In Which Lucy Kimbaltori s Quaint Parlour 
 is the Background for a Strange Scene 
 
 ANNE had told Alma, quietly so as to 
 avert any feeling of panic, but de- 
 cisively, that she thought it would 
 be better for the girls to go ; and she directed 
 them how to leave : by the kitchen and back 
 through the yard to the alley gate. When 
 Burns entered with his captive and Peggy, 
 only the Kimbaltons were there, in Lucy 
 Kimbalton's quaint parlour. 
 
 At sight of the Italian, Kimbalton's rage 
 flamed into red fury ; he had difficulty to 
 keep from seizing this creature and shaking 
 him into insensibility. The outrages at the 
 works had roused his fighting spirit and 
 made him obdurate ; but this ! this dastardly 
 attempt to wreak vengeance not on him 
 alone but on innocent noncombatants, here 
 in his mother's home, made sacred by the 
 things she had loved ! How dared they call 
 this war? (This being the only war he had 
 ever fought in, Kimbalton might, perhaps, be 
 pardoned for supposing that any war's worst 
 158
 
 A STRANGE SCENE 159 
 
 cruelties are inflicted on the field of battle ; 
 that in any war the defenseless and noncom- 
 batant are inviolate, immune.) 
 
 Kimbalton was flame-hot. Burns was cold 
 as chilled steel. Because excitement made 
 him cool, not hot, he was what he was. 
 Anne shared her father's anger, though in 
 less degree. Little Peggy was bewildered. 
 She looked from Kimbalton in his rage to 
 Burns in his cool triumph, and then to the 
 trembling creature who had been about to do 
 so foul a deed. That she herself was on the 
 rack as well as he did not of course occur 
 to her. 
 
 " Peggy/' Burns asked, " did you ever see 
 this man before ? " 
 
 " Not that I raymimber," she answered, 
 shaking her head ; but her tone was doubt- 
 ful, not positive. 
 
 "Think hard!" 
 
 " Sure, I am ; but I can't say. I might of 
 seen him Halsted Strate is quite a place fer 
 seein' folks but I don't know who he is er 
 annythin' about him if that's what you 
 mane." 
 
 " You don't know why he tried to stop you 
 from coming in here ? " 
 
 "No." 
 
 " Well, I'll tell you ! I suppose you don't
 
 160 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 know, either, who sent him here to blow this 
 place up ? " 
 
 " No. How should I know ? " 
 
 " That's what I'd like to find out. What 
 have you got in your hand ? " 
 
 Peggy looked down at it as if, in the ex- 
 citement, she had forgotten what she did 
 have in her hand. Then she held it out. 
 
 " I'm glad you ast me," she said. " It 
 come fer him this mornin' it's from his ma, 
 I guess an' I brought it along thinkin' 
 mebbe Miss Kimbalton could git it to him." 
 
 Burns took the letter and studied it for a 
 second. " Then you haven 't seen him 1 " he 
 remarked, as if to himself. 
 
 Peggy stared. " Seen him ? How would 
 I see him ? I dunno where he is. I looked 
 in all the papers, an' niver a word did I see 
 o' where you took him to. The avenin' 
 papers says there was a rumour that you had 
 a dynamiter ; but that no such arrest had 
 been made. You can't belave a word thim 
 papers says." 
 
 " Once in a great while you can and this 
 is that one time. I don't know where your 
 friend is, any more than you do but I hope 
 to know, any minute." 
 
 " Did he give you the slip?" Peggy cried, 
 incredulously.
 
 A STRANGE SCENE 161 
 
 " He did. He's a deep one that boy ! I 
 thought I had his number and then, I knew 
 I didn't ! But I've got it now and when I 
 get him 1 " 
 
 Burns' look made Peggy quail for Tom. 
 
 "What are you going to do with that 
 rascal ? " Kimbalton broke in impatiently, 
 indicating with a glaring look their present 
 captive. 
 
 Burns regarded the Italian briefly and with 
 utter contempt. " Keep him where he is until 
 we get the boy," he answered. "This creature 
 doesn't know any thing that's why he's here." 
 
 " He knows that it's a crime to blow up 
 property and destroy lives!" Kimbalton 
 thundered. 
 
 Burns shrugged. " In a way he does 
 yes ; but not as you and I know it, and not 
 as the fellows know it who sent him here. 
 Now, Peggy, you listen to me : You know 
 whose house this is ? " 
 
 " Why, yes ; Miss Anne told me." 
 
 "When?" 
 
 " Last avenin'." 
 
 "Had you ever heard, before, that Mr. 
 Kimbalton owns such a place ? " 
 
 " Niver." 
 
 "Very well. Now, when I took your 
 friend last night, I had no idea he was any-
 
 162 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 thing more than a dupe ; but I wanted to be 
 sure who he was working for. So I brought 
 him here not under arrest, but as Mr. Kim- 
 balton's well, guest for the night. I gave 
 him the run of the house, and told him 
 he was not under detention could go if 
 he wished. Then I left but I had him 
 watched. I wanted to see who he'd try to 
 communicate with. He didn't try. From 
 the way he acted, or didn't act, and things I 
 found out this morning, I was pretty well 
 convinced, an hour ago, that the boy didn't 
 know what was in that package. I told Mr. 
 Kimbalton, and he agreed to let the boy go 
 only, we'd have him watched for a while. 
 I came up here to tell him we would not ask 
 him to stay longer he was gone ! That was 
 less than an hour ago. Do you begin to 
 see anything ? " 
 
 Peggy was staring at him with a troubled, 
 startled gaze. 
 
 " I don't know," she faltered. 
 
 " Well, I'll help you : your friend knew 
 about this place knew I was here may 
 have surmised, or known, Mr. Kimbalton 
 was here. Suddenly, on finding that out, he 
 goes. In just about the time it would take 
 him to get busy, this dago appears with a 
 bomb. Now, do you get me ? "
 
 A STRANGE SCENE 163 
 
 " You think Tom Oliphant sint a man here 
 to blow you all up wid a bomb ? " 
 
 " Think it? Why, I just about know it ! " 
 
 Peggy looked appealingly at Anne at 
 Kimbalton ; they read her mute question, 
 and nodded a mute reply. Both seemed 
 sorry. But how discredit such evidence? 
 That she herself might also be under suspi- 
 cion never occurred to her. Her mind was 
 busy with a fugitive so busy that she was 
 not even surprised, as she might well have 
 been, at her sympathy going after him, the 
 fleeing stranger, instead of pouring itself out 
 on these tried friends who had made so nar- 
 row an escape from death or at least horrible 
 injury. 
 
 Of the little group, Anne was the only one 
 who could get a sufficient sense of detachment 
 to feel herself a spectator rather than a par- 
 ticipant. She wondered at many things, but 
 chiefly at Burns' attitude towards the Italian. 
 He talked as if he knew the captive could not 
 understand English. Did he know? Was 
 that why he made no attempt to question his 
 prisoner ? Yet, Anne thought, she could de- 
 tect a comprehending gleam in the Italian's 
 eyes. She wondered that Burns did not see 
 it wished she knew how to tell him. How 
 he would have loved it if she had I This
 
 164 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 man always insisted that there was no mys- 
 tery about his methods. He laughed at 
 " criminal types " and " degenerate char- 
 acteristics," and all such lingo. His was a 
 perfectly simple business of reading human 
 nature ; the man who had a wide reading to 
 call upon came the nearest to being able to 
 interpret the human nature of the immediate 
 puzzle that was all ! He read Anne's be- 
 wilderment as she did not read his purpose. 
 And he would have been glad if he could 
 have told her his almost ludicrously simple 
 little plan of action, so that she might have 
 the interest of watching how it worked. But 
 he knew no way to do this. 
 
 Peggy looked from the Kimbaltons with 
 their sorry glances to the Italian who, the 
 more she studied him, began to seem vaguely 
 familiar. She could not place him, and yet 
 the impression that she had seen him before 
 grew stronger. 
 
 " Why don't you ask him ? " she cried. 
 "He knows who sint him here ! " 
 
 Burns smiled. " D'you suppose he'd tell ? 
 And besides, we know ! Ah, ha ! I think 
 we have your young friend now." 
 
 There were sounds of footsteps on the front 
 stoop ; then a ring, which Burns answered, 
 admitting a policeman and Tom.
 
 A STRANGE SCENE 165 
 
 "There was an order to git this young 
 fella an' bring him here/' the officer said to 
 Burns. 
 
 Tom stared at the assembled company ; 
 and when he saw Peggy, his cheeks flamed 
 and he shut his eyes because they were brim- 
 ming. He was not unmanly. He was a boy 
 in a trap, a pitiable, powerless thing and 
 in a trap, no creature however valiant can 
 fight. His brief bravado was gone. If she 
 had not been there, he might have been sul- 
 lenly enduring. But the sight of her distress 
 was too much for his composure. 
 
 "Well, sir," Burns addressed him, "you 
 are a shrewder rascal than I thought and it 
 isn't your fault that I am here to tell you so." 
 
 His glance roved significantly from the gas- 
 pipe bomb and its unlighted fuse to the 
 Italian so significantly that Tom could not 
 fail to catch the implication. 
 
 " You think I sent him here to set off that 
 thing?" Tom cried. 
 
 " Who else could have sent him ? " Kim- 
 balton interposed, scathingly, 
 
 Peggy's lips quivered piteously, and she 
 laid hold of Andrew Kimbalton beseechingly 
 with her two tiny hands, reddened and rough- 
 ened. 
 
 "You don' belave it?" she entreated.
 
 166 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 " He couldrf do it ! Why, there couldn' be a 
 man that mane 1 He had hard feelin's in his 
 heart agin you 'count of his pa goin' inner- 
 cent to jail, an' you wouldn' try to save him. 
 But that was because you didn' know. Whin 
 you thought he was jist anny poor, fri'n'less 
 boy, you was kin' to him an' give him a job. 
 He seen you wasn't mane by intintions but 
 on'y jist whin you didn' know. How could 
 he want to do such a tur'ble thing to you ? 
 God don' make min that black in the soul ! " 
 
 " They make themselves that black ! " Kim- 
 balton retorted, glancing at the Italian and 
 then at Tom. "Don't be a fool, Peggy. 
 Look at that thing," indicating the bomb, 
 " and try to tell me there's anything too fiend- 
 ish for some men to do." 
 
 Peggy turned to the Italian. He had seen 
 nothing but rage and loathing in any face 
 but hers since Burns' grip of steel was laid 
 on his arm ; her look was full of appealing- 
 ness, of sad bewilderment as if she felt sure 
 he had a better nature than his wretched 
 plight would indicate. 
 
 His eyes shone with a grateful gleam. 
 
 "Why did you do it?" she entreated, 
 struggling with her tears. 
 
 He turned away, as if lest his eyes speak, 
 denying the control he kept on his tongue.
 
 A STRANGE SCENE 167 
 
 " You can take your prisoner away," Burns 
 said to the officer. " Book him on conspiracy 
 with intent to kill. I'll be there directly. 
 Send the wagon for this man." 
 
 Sobbing, Peggy thrust at Tom his mother's 
 letter. " I got you into this," she said, bro- 
 kenly ; "an', somehow, I'll git you out." 
 
 Then she hid her face in the crook of her 
 arm, and would not see him taken away. 
 
 Tom took the letter and reached out as if 
 he would have touched her, then turned has- 
 tily towards the door and said to his captor : 
 " Come on I can't stand this." 
 
 Anne wept, and her father looked misera- 
 bly uncomfortable. Only Burns seemed un- 
 moved : he knew he must be cruel to be not 
 kind but just. He nodded imperatively to 
 the officer; and an instant later, the door 
 closed on captor and captive.
 
 XIX 
 
 In Which a Penny of Little Peg's Is Paid 
 Back With Interest 
 
 BURNS' searching gaze never left the 
 face of the Italian. 
 " Peggy/' he said, " I'm sorry ; but 
 I'm afraid I've got to hold you, too " 
 
 Anne made a gesture of indignant protest, 
 but the detective did not heed her. 
 
 " until we get this thing settled. You 
 
 got Mr. Kimbalton to hire this boy ; you took 
 the message that sent Oliphant after the in- 
 fernal machine ; you had agreed to keep it 
 in your shop till called for ; you knew that 
 Oliphant had a fancied grievance against Mr. 
 Kimbalton that he had written Mr. Kimbal- 
 ton harsh letters. Mr. Kimbalton was an old 
 acquaintance of yours I might almost say 
 an old friend ; his daughter was a new friend ; 
 they liked you, and it seemed as if you might 
 reasonably have liked them ; as if, when they 
 or their interests were threatened with dyna- 
 mite, you would have thought first of warn- 
 ing, of protecting them. This Oliphant boy 
 says he is a stranger to you. Yet when he is 
 1 68
 
 PAID BACK WITH INTEREST 169 
 
 arrested for trying to destroy them, you cry 
 heart-brokenly, instead of being glad they 
 are safe. I could go on but I won't. Can 
 you explain these things, Peggy ? Can you 
 tell me any reason why you should not be 
 held as an accomplice ? " 
 
 He spoke gently, regretfully, even sadly. 
 Peggy stared at him, horrified. When he 
 finished, she blushed scarlet. There was only 
 one reason, and she couldn't tell it ; but if 
 she could, what extenuation would it seem ? 
 
 " Why, Mr. Burns, this is absurd ! " Anne 
 Kimbalton cried. " Father ! tell him you 
 can't allow it." 
 
 Burns turned towards her angrily. " I 
 must use my judgment, Miss Kimbalton, not 
 yours or retire from the case." 
 
 " That's right, Anne," her father interposed. 
 " I feel as bad as you do. But we've got 
 shrewd rascals to fight, and we can't be 
 sentimental they're not ! Perhaps Peggy 
 thought she was justified but I wish she had 
 played me fair and square, even as an enemy. 
 It might have left me some faith in human 
 nature. Come, Anne ; we'll get out of here 
 before that patrol wagon comes." 
 
 He turned away, and Anne with a sorrow- 
 ful look at Peggy was about to follow him, 
 when the Italian cried out : " No ! "
 
 I yo THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 It was a pity that none of them could read 
 the expression that flashed in Burns' eyes for 
 an immeasurably small fraction of a second ; 
 but they were looking at the hitherto-mute 
 captive. 
 
 " No 1 " the Italian cried imploringly. 
 " Not penny girl ! " 
 
 He fumbled at his breast pockets, uncon- 
 scious that he might be suspected of feeling 
 for a dirk, and took out a dirty envelope, 
 from which he drew, tenderly, a pressed and 
 faded flower. 
 
 " Luckee day ! " he said, holding it out to 
 Peggy with a smile she knew, suddenly. 
 
 " Oh ! " she cried ; " thafs who you are I 
 An' did I bring you to this luck, too ? " 
 
 "No! No!" his look darkened; "not 
 you." 
 
 She handed back the faded flower ; but he 
 would not take it. 
 
 " No help bambini now ! " he cried ; and 
 drew from the envelope a little photograph 
 of two Italian babies, one of whom he had 
 never seen. 
 
 " What does he mean ? " Kimbalton asked 
 Peggy. 
 
 " He manes," she answered, dashing the 
 back of her rough little hand at her brimming 
 eyes, " that the flower can't help his babies
 
 PAID BACK WITH INTEREST 171 
 
 now. I raymimber him : he wint by my 
 place wan day a good while ago, an' he had 
 a look about him that made me heart ache 
 the kin' of a look a dog has, sometimes, whin 
 you can't git by him widout pattin' his head 
 an' sayin', ' Nice ol' fella ! ' 'cause you know 
 that's what he's starvin' fer. I smiled fri'n'ly 
 at this man, here, an' got him into Marti- 
 nelli's. Martinelli give him coffee an' rolls 
 he's awful good an' got out o' him that 
 there was aven worse the matter wid him 
 than starvin' : he was dyin' o' homesickness, 
 too ; he'd left wan baby an' his wife behind, 
 an' another wan'd come since he wint away. 
 He thought he could sind fer thim but he 
 hadn' no job, an' I guess they seemed a 
 million miles away. So I helped Martinelli 
 hunt where they was advertisin' fer section 
 han's, an' then I took me penny fer that day 
 an' bought a bit of a red flower an' pinned it 
 on our fri'nd, an' made him smile, an' told 
 him it was his lucky day. An' by an' by 
 Martinelli got a pos'-card sayin' he," nodding 
 towards the captive, " had got a job, an* was 
 kapein' the little flower fer to help him 
 bring over the bambini," the look on the 
 Italian's face was too much for her ; she could 
 not go on, so she tried to turn it off on her- 
 self with a bit of her pathetic raillery. " I got
 
 172 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 rayson to think small o' meself as a mascot," 
 she finished her mouth twitching. 
 
 " You've got reason to think great of your- 
 self as a mascot," Burns corrected ; "for if it 
 hadn't been for you, probably none of us 
 would have been alive by this time." 
 
 " Hadn' been fer me ? " she echoed, blankly. 
 
 " For you and your penny flower ; that's 
 why he stopped you, or tried to. It didn't 
 mean anything to him that the thing he was 
 to do would blow other people to a horrible 
 death he hadn't seen us ; he couldn't feel 
 our love of life, our right to live, the grief 
 that our deaths would cause ; so he agreed 
 to set a lighted match to a twisted string, and 
 go away. Perhaps he was to get money for 
 it to bring over the bambini. God! that's 
 the way things turn out in this queer world. 
 . . . But you ! You had been kind to 
 him he couldn't hurt you isn't that it?" 
 
 He turned to the dynamiter, who nodded 
 assent. 
 
 " This doesn't alter any of the things I said, 
 Peggy," Burns went on. " But I guess it 
 ought to alter the situation for you. Mr. 
 Kimbalton would probably not want you 
 locked up " 
 
 Kimbalton almost glared at him. " I 
 should say not!" he declared. "Peggy
 
 173 
 
 knows whether she is glad she saved our 
 lives or not ; but the thing there can be no 
 doubt of is that we're glad she saved them. 
 And by George 1 this is the last time I want 
 to be mixed up in scenes of justice for the 
 wrong-doer. If it's full of these strange com- 
 plications, I'm glad it's no part of my busi- 
 ness to see that justice is done. I'll leave 
 that to you fellows who have no sentiment." 
 He was quite irascible at Burns, as if the lat- 
 ter had needlessly dragged him into a har- 
 rowing situation. 
 
 " Humph ! " said Burns replying to the 
 charge of having no sentiment. 
 
 " If I kin go," Peggy ventured, " I better be 
 doin' it it mus' be gittin' pas' five o'clock." 
 
 In her hand she still held the little flower. 
 
 " Give me that, Peggy," Kimbalton said, 
 reaching for it. 
 
 She laid it in his outstretched palm. 
 
 " I I'll try to make it up somehow to the 
 bambini" he murmured not trusting him- 
 self to look at the father of the bambini, but 
 turning away sharply. 
 
 Peggy looked from one to the other then 
 sobbed aloud. 
 
 " Oh, God ! Why d'you 1'ave people git 
 in such tur'ble trouble jest from not knowin' 
 wan another till 'tis too late ? "
 
 XX 
 
 In Which Burns Disclaims, and Explains 
 
 BURNS smiled and shrugged. " Won- 
 derful ? Well, it's wonderful to me to 
 hear a baby talk French because I 
 can't do it. It's a matter of experience this 
 job of mine. Peggy said the Italian tried to 
 stop her from coming in. What does that 
 mean? To you, nothing; to me, a lot, be- 
 cause I've had a fairly comprehensive experi- 
 ence with dynamiters and their sentiments. 
 There was the fellow in 'Frisco who was 
 perfectly willing to stand by and let Spreck- 
 els and me and our families be blown to 
 atoms for prosecuting the graft investiga- 
 tion, but who couldn't bear to have Fremont 
 Older injured, because Older had once done 
 him a trifling kindness and forgotten about 
 it ; the fellow warned Older, and we nipped 
 the whole scheme. Another fellow who was 
 told off to light a fuse under a house where 
 fifteen men were at work, in order that one 
 man of the fifteen might ' get his,' was with- 
 out compunction about killing fourteen heads
 
 BURNS EXPLAINS 175 
 
 of families who had no connection with the 
 graft investigation, but balked when the ap- 
 pointed time came, because the wife of one 
 of the workmen had just gone into the build- 
 ing with her two little girls. I could go on 
 but I won't. If that Italian tried to stop 
 Peggy, it meant that he had some instruc- 
 tions or some sentiment about her. It might 
 have been instruction that was my first 
 thought. Then, that began to seem more 
 and more unlikely, as I put this and that 
 together ; so I tried for the sentiment got it 
 in the way the dumb creature looked when I 
 seemed to be drawing Peggy into the net. 
 ' If I drag her in far enough, I'll get him/ I 
 told myself. You see, I had to go pretty far 
 before he broke. She felt awful bad about 
 that young fellow ; but the dago didn't get 
 that, or it didn't quite get him. But when 
 he realized that she was under arrest, too 
 well, I suppose he had a mental picture of 
 the news stand minus Peggy and her smile 
 and her penny, and it all connected up, some- 
 how, in his mind with the bambini he would 
 never see and that was his breaking point. 
 That's all. The medisevals used the thumb- 
 screw and the rack and the iron boot to 
 bring men to the breaking-point. When we 
 got a little bit too nice for that, we used the
 
 176 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 third degree. You don't need either, unless 
 you're a bungler. I've never yet met with a 
 man I couldn't understand by putting myself 
 in his place." 
 
 Kimbalton stared. " You don't say ! " he 
 exclaimed. " Well ! we live and learn God 
 be praised ! It seems to me that till I die, 
 whenever I know of dreadful things hap- 
 pening between man and man, I'll hear ring- 
 ing in my ears that heart-broken appeal of 
 little Peg: 'Oh, God! Why d'you 1'ave 
 people git in such tur'ble trouble jest fer 
 want o' knowin' wan another ? ' ' 
 
 Burns nodded. " Maybe you think a man 
 in my business don't have occasion to echo 
 that I " 
 
 " I wouldn't be in your business for any- 
 thing in the world," Kimbalton replied. 
 
 " No ? " dryly. " Well, a good many peo- 
 ple seem to feel that way. But of course, 
 I feel the same way about your business. 
 You create conditions for thousands ; I only 
 wrestle with the occasional one who has let 
 conditions throw him." 
 
 The men were in Kimbalton' s library or 
 perhaps it were more exact to say in the 
 library of Kimbalton's house. It was a room 
 he made considerable use of, but the books 
 in it were a mere part of its scheme of dig-
 
 BURNS EXPLAINS 177 
 
 nity and decorum ; Kimbalton was not a 
 bookman. 
 
 It was Sunday night, and the excitement 
 of the preceding day was somewhat abated. 
 Luigi Ferucci, with the picture of the bambini 
 in his pocket, was in a cell in the Desplaines 
 Street station, awaiting his preliminary ar- 
 raignment on Monday morning. And Tom 
 Oliphant, with his mother's letter of congrat- 
 ulation in his pocket, was in an adjoining cell 
 adjoining, so that if they attempted any 
 communication with each other, they could 
 be overheard. For Luigi had lapsed into 
 dogged dumbness again, after being taken 
 to the station ; and the mystery of who sent 
 him to the Lucy Kimbalton house with that 
 bomb remained unexplained. The Sunday 
 papers were full of the sensation, though 
 there were some phases of it that had been 
 successfully guarded from the young men of 
 the press. What got out was : that Burns 
 and Kimbalton, in conference in the old Kim- 
 balton home on the West Side, had surprised 
 Ferucci in the act of laying a bomb to blow 
 them up ; and that suspicion of having sent 
 Ferucci there was directed to Thomas Oli- 
 phant, " a young man whose grievance 
 against Kimbalton on his father's account is 
 supposed to have made him a ready dupe
 
 178 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 for the disgruntled workers." This was read 
 " down state " almost as soon as in Chicago ; 
 Tom's mother could not even know that her 
 letter had reached her boy. 
 
 There was no one to tell of Peggy's pres- 
 ence on the scene, unless Ida or Katie, who 
 did not know the outcome of her part in it, 
 should chance to tell some of their acquaint- 
 ances that she was there. Peggy had been 
 glad to promise that she would tell nothing 
 and also that she would enjoin secrecy on 
 Alma. That closed one source of information 
 to the inquisitorial reporter, despoiled Petie 
 of the sensation of his life, but spared Peggy 
 as well as serving Burns. Anne Kimbalton 
 was particularly grateful for the turn of events 
 that made it possible to keep Peggy, for a 
 time at least, out of the horrid spotlight. It 
 even so chanced that her own presence was 
 not discovered and, so, not discussed. But 
 to-morrow morning's hearing would drag 
 forth some things, no doubt; and no one 
 could be sure that they might not be the 
 things most desirable to keep quiet. 
 
 " I wish," Kimbalton said, ignoring after a 
 moment's pause Burns' last remark, " we 
 could learn the truth about that young Oli- 
 phant." 
 
 He had the inclination to petulance of the
 
 BURNS EXPLAINS 179 
 
 man who is seldom balked ; and he seemed 
 almost as if he would imply that Burns ought 
 to be able to find that truth. 
 
 " I wish we could 1 " the detective con- 
 curred, heartily. " I only hope that, if all 
 else fails and we have to bring him to trial, 
 he'll be able to clear himself. But it isn't al- 
 ways easy to prove innocence. His father 
 couldn't do it." 
 
 " Do you think he was innocent?" 
 
 " I think he was." 
 
 Kimbalton got up and began to pace. 
 That was an ugly thought to endure. Not 
 because he had done anything to bring in- 
 justice to an innocent man but because he 
 had done nothing to prevent it. Kimbalton 
 was beginning to have an acute social con- 
 science. 
 
 " Do you think the boy did what we've 
 jailed him for ? " 
 
 " I don't know. I wish I did ! I believe 
 it is quite possible for circumstantial evi- 
 dence, as strong as that against him, to be 
 entirely false and misleading. My study of 
 human nature doesn't make that boy out a 
 deliberate dynamiter one who would carry 
 vindictiveness to the awful lengths of murder. 
 But I work in the interests of the law-abiding 
 for their ^protection. I can't let that boy
 
 I8o THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 loose in the community until I know that he's 
 a reasonably safe creature to be abroad 
 among his kind. Of course, I may have my 
 own theories about there being unmolested 
 members of society who are worse for their 
 fellows than dynamiters ; but I am not free to 
 act on my theories I am under the law, like 
 all the rest of the world. This thing we're 
 trying to ferret out is not a personal but a 
 social grievance ; the decision as to those 
 two men is not up to you because your life 
 and property were threatened, but up to the 
 community which may or may not want those 
 two men loose in its midst." 
 
 " By Jove 1 " cried Andrew Kimbalton, 
 "the whole thing's too complex for me." 
 
 " I jhave one hope," Burns said, rising to 
 go ; " one little hope." He smiled. " No, I 
 won't tell it," he went on, answering the 
 question in Kimbalton's look. " If it works 
 out, you'll know. And if it doesn't, you 
 won't be disappointed."
 
 XXI 
 
 In Which Anne Tells Her Dream 
 
 WHEN Burns was gone, Anne came 
 in. She was eager for news, to 
 hear all he had said ; and she had 
 other things she wanted to talk over with her 
 father. 
 
 " Dad," she began, getting around to this 
 matter of her own, " of course Peggy saved 
 our lives " 
 
 " Of course she did ! " 
 
 " And we want to do something for her to 
 express our gratefulness." 
 
 " Of course ! " 
 
 " Have you thought of anything?" 
 
 " No ; I'll leave that to you." 
 
 " I knew you would ! And I've been try- 
 ing to think." 
 
 "Well ?" 
 
 She laughed. " It was funny. I tried to 
 think of all the things that we could do for little 
 Peg and I couldn't think of one of the usual 
 things that it seemed to me she might care 
 for. If we gave her money, I'm not at all 
 sure that she'd take it. But if she did take 
 181
 
 182 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 it, I'm quite sure what would become of it : 
 Polly would get most of it for folderols, and 
 Petie would get the rest for ' shows ' at the 
 Academy. If we bought Peggy something, 
 what could we buy her? She can't wear 
 good clothes her work would spoil them, 
 and they would spoil her. A gold watch 
 would be silly on dear little Peg, and if 
 burglars didn't get it, Polly would. And 
 wouldn't it be wicked to try to do her a 
 kindness that would take her out of the 
 ' imporium ' where she does such a world 
 of good ? " 
 
 " It would J " 
 
 " For she can do what I can't do, no matter 
 how I try. I mean to work with her all she'll 
 let me ; but I don't know in just what way it 
 will be. The more I think about it, the more 
 I seem to see that Peggy doesn't need me or 
 anything I have or can do. But I need her ! " 
 
 Andrew Kimbalton shook his head un- 
 comprehendingly. Anne need not expect 
 him to understand how there could be a 
 human creature that did not need her or 
 what she could give and do. 
 
 "The biggest thing that can happen to 
 Peggy, or to her world, is to let her be as 
 she is," Anne went on. "Yet think how 
 cheap and miserable I feel when I say that I
 
 ANNE TELLS HER DREAM 183 
 
 I've thought of giving Peggy a fund to draw 
 on then I remembered how she had refused 
 your offer of a dollar a day ; and I can see 
 that she is right. Do you know something, 
 Daddy Kimbalton : there is hardly any way 
 in the world to give people things and do it 
 right. The only justice is to let them earn 
 enough! Maybe you can't come to it. I 
 suppose it upsets all your training. But I'm 
 going to train for it 1 I'm ashamed to look 
 at myself in the glass I've got so much that 
 I don't need and that I can't seem to give 
 away. I'll keep doing what I can, every day, 
 as dear little Peggy says. But I shan't try 
 to believe that I'm doing all I can till Ida 
 Levin and Katie Scyzmanska and Alma 
 Petersen don't need anything from me but 
 my friendship, just as I need theirs." 
 
 Anne was very lovely in her earnestness. 
 Andrew Kimbalton was moved by the beauty 
 and ardour of his child rather than by the 
 vision she was seeing. He smiled tenderly 
 at her an almost worshipful smile. Her 
 youth, her enthusiasm, were the most pre- 
 cious things in all the world to him. He 
 drew her to him and kissed her. No lover 
 would ever give her a kiss so reverent, so 
 adoring, so wistful for her happiness. 
 
 And Anne, as she nestled close to him, her
 
 184 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 head against his breast, went on with her 
 dreaming for a while, her fancies fed by the 
 fire into which they were both staring and 
 seeing so-different things ! 
 
 " Dad," she said, presently, " will you ever 
 forget little Peg yesterday when she stood 
 there in grandmother's parlour and looked 
 from you and the faded flower to Ferucci 
 and the picture of the bambini, and just cried 
 out to God, heart-brokenly, about the pity of 
 people not knowing one another better ? If 
 you had known about the babies in Italy, 
 how quick you would have been to help him 
 send for them ! And if he could have known 
 the great, big, kind, tender heart of you, he 
 never would have consented to try to kill you 
 with that awful bomb. And now, when you 
 know, it is too late to help 1 He's the state's 
 prisoner, now and your forgiving him won't 
 do him any good. We've got to be friendly 
 before it gets too late ! Now, you listen while 
 I tell you the one thing I've thought of that 
 we might do for Peggy perhaps it'll lead to 
 a bigger thing some day when we all under- 
 stand one another better. I want to start a 
 little club, and call it The Peggy Club for 
 girls for Alma and Ida and Katie and their 
 friends, and for Peggy and me just a friend- 
 ship club, a place to go and get better ac-
 
 ANNE TELLS HER DREAM 185 
 
 quainted. I can't have it here, of course 
 the girls wouldn't come ; nor even in grand- 
 mother's house, as I tried to. And when 
 Peggy has it in her shop or kitchen, as she 
 does now it isn't a club now, but it amounts 
 to the same thing it means that neither she 
 nor Polly can have private callers, because 
 there are always some of the girls there. 
 Peggy is beginning to worry about Polly, 
 because Polly has no place to entertain her 
 friends. And some of these days Peggy will 
 be wanting a chance at her own kitchen for 
 her own courting, I'm thinking. So I want 
 to rent the floor above Peggy's, and fix it up 
 a little, as the girls would like it, and have it 
 for a place where girls can go and have 
 pleasant, friendly times. I think the matter 
 with your girls' club out at the Works is, it's 
 too big : you don't have happy, intimate 
 times when you have to go to great, public 
 banquets or to receptions. And girls that 
 have worked hard all day don't want to 
 exercise in a gymnasium or listen to a lec- 
 ture on the Land of the Midnight Sun, any 
 more than you want to play hand-ball or hear 
 ' Die Gotterdammerung.' You've tried the 
 way that some one proposed to you. Do you 
 mind if I try the way I've thought out for 
 myself?"
 
 186 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 " No, no ! go ahead ! Feel your own way 
 that's the only real progress. And whether 
 your dear little scheme helps anybody else 
 or not, it can't fail to help you. Try, sweet- 
 heart when you believe in a thing, try it ; 
 and if it fails, or you fail, try something else. 
 Keep trying that's life 1 People wonder 
 why I go on making money when I can't 
 use what I have. Fools ! Don't they know 
 it isn't the money ? What am I to do with 
 the energy, the insight, the experience I've 
 developed in all these years ? When I see a 
 thing that commends itself to my judgment 
 and stirs my fighting blood, I've got to go 
 after it or die 1 I haven't left you much to 
 fight for, in one way. You've got a job on 
 your hands to find things to go after. When 
 you've found something that appeals to you, 
 keep after it and God make it hard to over- 
 take 1 "
 
 XXII 
 
 In Which Peggy Unconsciously Makes Out a 
 Case For Tom 
 
 " TT DON'T care to go over there it 
 would make the thing look too im- 
 
 -*- portant. Just tell her that young 
 Oliphant wants to see her. I guess that 
 won't be stretching the truth, either. Be as 
 casual as you can." 
 
 " All right, sir." 
 
 Officer Keegan of the Desplaines Street 
 station started for Peggy's " imporium," and 
 Burns sat back in the captain's office and 
 discussed the case, and the conduct of the 
 prisoners. That is to say, the captain dis- 
 cussed them, and Burns listened and as- 
 sented. 
 
 It was about nine-thirty when Keegan 
 came back with Peggy. She seemed sur- 
 prised to see Burns. 
 
 " Oliphant didn't ask to see you, Peggy," 
 Burns told her. " But I knew it would do him 
 good. He's awful despondent. See if you 
 can't cheer him up a little bit." 
 
 Peggy looked as bankrupt of cheer as any 
 187
 
 188 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 one had ever seen her ; but she smiled her 
 wistful, crooked little smile. 
 
 "What'll I tell him?" she asked, pathet- 
 ically. " That jail's a gran' place to be ? 
 That he naden't be bothered wid huntin' no 
 job, or payin' no board bill ? That he'll aven 
 git his hair cut free, an' a fine fancy suit o' 
 clo'es, an' kin live in a cage like a canary ? " 
 
 Her face twitched as she drew this picture ; 
 one does not live long where Peggy lived 
 without hearing tales of "the pen." She 
 turned, and dashed the tears away with the 
 back of her little hand. 
 
 Burns liked Peggy, even though he could 
 not be quite sure of certain things about her ; 
 but he was not sorry to see her cry just 
 now. 
 
 " If he can prove where he was while he 
 was out of the Kimbalton house, and can 
 give a good reason why he left it so uncere- 
 moniously, he'll get off to-morrow after his 
 preliminary hearing. If he can't, of course 
 he'll be held for trial. A great deal depends 
 on to-morrow morning. That's why I 
 thought it might be a good plan for you to 
 talk with him. When any of us try to tell 
 him what's for his own good, he gets sullen 
 and suspicious." 
 
 " Ain't it quare," Peggy cried, wrathfully,
 
 A CASE FOR TOM 189 
 
 " that he'd git mistrus'ful of you ? He must 
 have an awful villainous nature ! " 
 
 Burns laughed. " Don't fly off the handle, 
 Peggy," he entreated. " Try to think of this 
 a little from Mr. Kimbalton's point of view. 
 He's just about as anxious to see that young- 
 ster cleared as you are ! And I think he 
 means to have the father's case looked into. 
 You're not an unreasonable girl. Why can't 
 you take a calm view of this ? Nobody 
 wants Oliphant involved. Everybody'll be 
 glad to see him cleared. But you can see 
 that we've got to get some accounting for 
 his movements. Try to persuade him that 
 this is no ' frame-up ' get him to make an 
 effort and clear himself." 
 
 Peggy listened. Burns' manner was frank 
 and convincingly sincere. It was true: if 
 Tom was " up against it," at least he was 
 not held without what might welt seem to 
 any one sufficient reason. 
 
 " Of course," Burns went on, " I know 
 Oliphant is being played for a dupe. But I 
 can't tell just how blind he is : whether he 
 knows what he's doing, or doesn't know." 
 
 " I could tell you that ! " she cried. 
 
 He smiled. " Telling me isn't going to 
 do any good," he reminded her. " This 
 thing isn't up to me it's up to the State's
 
 190 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 Attorney." And he explained to her, as he 
 had always to be explaining to some one, 
 that he was no agent of private vindictive- 
 ness, but a man who sought to serve the 
 laws of the commonwealth. 
 
 " I'll try," she said. 
 
 Tom was sitting with his head in his hands, 
 when she stopped before his cell-door. It 
 was quiet in the lockup : Saturday night's 
 drunks were sobered, and Sunday night's had 
 not begun to come in. Tom heard the little, 
 inarticulate sound of distress that Peggy 
 made. He raised his head, and stared. It 
 might be Peggy herself, or it might be only 
 another vision of her. She tried to smile ; 
 but the tears would come. 
 
 " I came to see you," she faltered. 
 
 He was ashamed to whine, and attempted 
 a bit of raillery. " And I can't even ask you 
 to sit down," he replied. 
 
 " I can't stay long," she answered. " I jest 
 come to see, couldn' I maybe cheer you up a 
 little. But I I guess I don't know how." 
 
 " I guess nobody knows how," he said ; 
 " except that it's something to see you. If I 
 have any comfort at all, it's in thinking that 
 you don't believe what they're trying to make 
 out against me." 
 
 " Of course I don't ! " she cried. " An 1
 
 A CASE FOR TOM 191 
 
 Mr. Burns says I'm to tell you that nobody 
 wants to belave thim things. He says Mr. 
 Kimbalton'll be almost as glad as as I will 
 if you kin jest satisfy thim that you wasn't 
 in the plot. They're hopin' you kin do it to- 
 morrow mornin', so you won't be held for no 
 trial." 
 
 " Do you believe that ? " 
 
 " Sure I belave it ! I kin see there's been 
 a lot of awful mistakes ; but why would I 
 belave they'd want to make trouble fer you, 
 anny more than I'd belave you'd want to 
 make trouble fer thim ? Some wan have 
 been makin' a goat o' you, an' we gotta find 
 out who it is. It began Friday avenin', wid 
 me gittin' that quare kin' o' message on the 
 tillyphone. I didn' see it then, but I see it 
 now. An' Mr. Burns says some wan sint 
 word to him that if he'd come to my place 
 about tin o'clock, he'd fin' you wid the goods 
 on. Now, we know there wasn't anny wan 
 that could 'a' done that except the fella that 
 tillyphoned me. But how kin we prove it ? " 
 
 " We can't," he answered, bitterly. 
 
 "An' you couldn' git no wan to swear 
 where you was after you left that house ? " 
 
 " How could I ? I was getting away as 
 fast as I could go." 
 
 " It's such a pity you wint ! "
 
 192 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 " Oh, I don't know 1 If I'd stayed, they'd 
 have said I sent for the dynamiters to come 
 and blow me up." 
 
 " He was havin' you watched, he said ; 
 he'd know you didn' do that." 
 
 He was silent for a moment, then he 
 laughed. " Do you know," he said, " I 
 have only the faintest idea of what this dyna- 
 miting is all about. Everything in the world 
 I know about it is what Mr. McNabb told me 
 in Martinelli's, on Thursday morning. He 
 pointed out Burns to me and said it was re- 
 ported that Burns was on the Kimbalton 
 dynamite case. I didn't even know what 
 that was and he told me. He said Burns 
 was a deep one, and nobody ever finds out 
 what he's about. That's the only time I ever 
 heard him or anybody mention it. And I've 
 never been interested in labour troubles so 
 I ain't likely to pay much attention to them 
 in newspapers. I don't even know who I'm 
 supposed to be mixed up with. They don't 
 tell me anything they just ask me." 
 
 " I dunno much about thim mesilf," Peggy 
 declared. " I niver rade nothin' about 'em in 
 the papers ; it's all so mixed up : wan says 
 ' 'Tis ' an' wan says ' 'Tain't,' an' there you 
 are ! But there's been an awful lot o' talk 
 'round our place to-day, an' o' course our
 
 A CASE FOR TOM 193 
 
 Petie's jest about crazy wid excitement. He 
 don't know about me bein' in it yeste'day. 
 But he knows Burns was to our place Friday 
 avenin', an' you was pinched there ; an' I'm 
 havin' all I kin do to kape him from tellin* 
 it because Mr. Burns wants to kape me out 
 of it as long's he kin." 
 
 "I wonder why? " 
 
 " That I don' know. But he was anxious 
 fer it not to git out about it bein' on account 
 o' me the dago wouldn' light his fuse." 
 
 Peggy stopped short and clapped her hand 
 to her mouth. 
 
 " I forgot ! " she cried. " You didn' know 
 that : it was after you was took away. Oh 1 
 I'm sorry I said annything." 
 
 " On account of you ? " he repeated, blankly. 
 " Did you know him ? " 
 
 "It seems I did," she answered. "But 
 whin you was there I couldn' raymimber it. 
 He thought of it the poor fella 1 " 
 
 "Poor fellow ! " he echoed, wrathfully. 
 
 "Sure he's a poor fella," she contended ; 
 " an' my heart's heavy fer him. Some wan 
 have got him into this, jest like they have 
 got you." 
 
 He flared, angrily. " Do you think any one 
 could get me into putting a bomb under a 
 house and blowing people to death?" he cried.
 
 194 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 " No," she answered ; " you'd know how 
 tur'ble it was, an' you wouldn' do it ; I guess 
 they had to use you widout lettin' you find 
 it out. But he's dif'runt. Mr. Burns was 
 tellin' me how 'tis a man kin do a thing like 
 that an' not really mane no harm ; how he 
 kin git to thinkin' o' the money he's goin' to 
 git, an' bringin' over the bambinos, an' niver 
 have room in his mind fer to think o' what's 
 goin' to happen to other folks after he lights 
 his match." 
 
 " He was kidding you ! " the boy cried. 
 "There couldn't be such a fool." 
 
 " I belave him," she retorted. " I can't be- 
 lave there could be such a divil until I think 
 o' the one that planned all this an' got you 
 two into it ! An' I s'pose if you could know 
 his mind, you'd find that he had it all ray- 
 soned out that it wasn' wrong fer him to do." 
 
 "Well, I'd like to have a chance to tell 
 him a thing or two ! " the boy said, venge- 
 fully. " If there's a devil in the world, or 
 anywhere, it's the fellow who makes dupes 
 of the innocent and unsuspecting, and lets 
 them suffer for his sins. If I ever get out of 
 this, I'll find the man who got me into it, if I 
 have to give my life up to it ; and I won't 
 wait for any law to deal with him I'll do it 
 myself!"
 
 A CASE FOR TOM 195 
 
 Peggy looked distressed. " Now, don't 
 you go on an' talk like that whin they bring 
 you to court in the mornin'," she entreated ; 
 " or they'll be kapein' you locked up fer a 
 dang'rous man that's likely to be killin' anny- 
 body he has a grievance wid. What you're 
 to tell thim is that you ain't niver seen that 
 dago but the wan time whin they brought 
 you to him " 
 
 He laughed, mockingly. " And of course 
 they'll believe me I " 
 
 " Well, 1'ave 'em prove dif'runt if they kin. 
 An' don't git grouchy, thinkin' it's no use 
 to difind yersilf. Spake up an' tell all you 
 know. Try to raymimber where you wint 
 yeste'day " 
 
 "How can I?" he interrupted. "I wasn't 
 noticing where I was going ; it was all 
 strange to me. All I knew was that I was 
 getting away from Halsted Street, and from 
 Madison, and trying to get away from every- 
 body I had ever seen. It just came to me 
 all of a sudden that I'd go. At first, I 
 thought there was no use putting up any 
 fight they were after me, and they'd get 
 me. Then I guess it was the book I had 
 been reading all morning I got game, all 
 of a sudden. ' Somebody's got to fight these 
 fellows,' I said to myself, 'or they'll get to
 
 196 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 where they were before the French Revolu- 
 tion, when they could clap a man in jail if 
 they didn't like him, and keep him there 
 till he rotted, and nobody that belonged to 
 him could even find out where he'd gone.' 
 Seemed like something inside me just boiled 
 and so I ran. I might have known bet- 
 ter ! " 
 
 " I wish you had ! " she sighed. " But that 
 can't be helped now. If you had of stayed 
 there, they'd know that somebody besides 
 you knew about that house, an' about Burns 
 an' Mr. Kimbalton bein' there. I dunno why 
 the fella that tillyphoned me an' sint you on 
 that chase, an' give the word to Burns where 
 he could find you, couldn' have been watchin' 
 to see where he took you " 
 
 She stopped short. " Petie ! " she said, 
 forcing her mind back over the events of 
 Friday evening. " Whin he come in, jest be- 
 fore Mr. Burns come, he told me our place 
 was bein' watched. I didn' pay no 'tention 
 to him at the time, because he's always 
 sleuthin'. But why couldn' that of been the 
 fella that was to see where you was took ? " 
 
 " I suppose it was," he answered, eagerly. 
 " But how can we prove it ? " 
 
 " Well, we kin tell Mr. Burns an' I bet he 
 kin prove it 1 " Peggy cried.
 
 XXIII 
 
 In Which Luigi Keeps On Sayiri Nothing 
 Like the Tar Baby 
 
 AS Peggy stepped back from where 
 she had been standing, close to the 
 bars of Tom's cell door, she saw a 
 familiar face in the adjoining cell. It was a 
 tragic face, deep-written with the marks of 
 despair and suffering. Luigi had recognized 
 her voice the moment she spoke to Tom ; 
 but cowered back out of sight because he 
 was beginning to realize in his dumb-animal 
 way that he was bringing grave trouble on 
 this young man and sorrow to the dear little 
 " Penny girl," because he dared not tell who 
 sent him to Lucy Kimbalton's house. " The 
 man " (Burns) had told him so ; and Luigi's 
 heart was wrung but what could he do ? 
 The warning delivered to him had been ade- 
 quate : let the carabineri do what they might, 
 it could not be so dreadful by half as what 
 would happen to him if he told who sent 
 him to light that fuse. And Luigi, it must 
 be remembered, had a hereditary terror of 
 private vengeance exceeding by far his fear 
 197
 
 198 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 of the police : the carabineri often missed you 
 the Camorra or Amafia or the Black Hand, 
 never ! Which was the reason he and his 
 kind were so frequently employed to bear 
 the brunt of situations like this. 
 
 He could hear snatches of what Tom and 
 Peggy said ; but they talked in low tones, 
 standing as close together as the grating 
 would allow ; and even if Luigi had been 
 able to hear more, much of their talk would 
 have been unintelligible to him. He was not 
 alert enough to try to hear, or to understand. 
 His pathetic, dog-like mind travelled in a 
 small round from the bambini to his present 
 plight, and back again to the bambini. 
 About his defense, or what was to become of 
 him, he had no more power to think than a 
 cur seized by the dog-catcher and thrust into 
 the terror-inspiring wagon for the pound. 
 The variety of his fears was as limited as the 
 variety of his sentiments, but both were in- 
 tensive to a degree. Peggy was probably 
 the only sentiment he had developed since 
 he left Italy ; she had entered his starving 
 heart with a smile, and a bright posy, and 
 an appeal to his ready belief in signs and 
 tokens. He would have done a great deal 
 to help to spare her ; but he dared not. For 
 those who punish secretly strike where the
 
 L UIGI SA YS NOTHING 199 
 
 blow hurts most on the bambini in Italy, if 
 they think that will stab most cruelly. So 
 Luigi's lips were locked. 
 
 He shrank back when he saw Peggy. 
 And she, too, was dumb ; not knowing what 
 to say. For she could not forget that she 
 had trapped him. And, somehow, not even 
 remembering the desperate need that he be 
 caught helped her to like any better the way 
 she had requited his regard for her. As she 
 looked at him and read the despair in his 
 face, she covered her face with her tiny 
 hands and wept. 
 
 Luigi came close to the bars of his cell. 
 " Poor penny-girl ! " he sobbed. 
 
 Peggy laid one arm against the bars, and 
 buried her head in it. Her childish form 
 shook with grief. 
 
 " No, no ! " the Italian entreated. 
 
 She lifted her head and tried to dry her tears 
 with her coarse little cotton handkerchief. 
 
 " You ought to hate me," she cried. 
 
 Luigi, not understanding what she meant, 
 made no reply. 
 
 "You try save me," Peggy went on, en- 
 deavouring to make herself clear, " an* I help 
 catch you. I fale very bad fer you an' fer 
 bambinos. But must save good, kind fri'nds. 
 Can you understan' ? Can you forgive ? "
 
 200 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 He nodded. At least he knew " forgive." 
 It had not occurred to him that Peggy helped 
 to trap him ; it was not at all clear to him 
 now. But she seemed to be pleading for 
 something ; and he nodded reassuringly. 
 
 " Poor penny-girl ! " he repeated, trying to 
 express his sorrow that he could not help her 
 further. And Peggy, interpreting it accord- 
 ing to her own thoughts, was moved by his 
 lack of resentment. 
 
 " Ye' re a gentler soul 'n me," she murmured, 
 " fer all yer dynamitin' 1 If you had of done 
 it to me, after me savin' you, I'd have cussed 
 you from here to Ballyhickon." 
 
 As she moved back, she could see both 
 men she knew, each in a strong-barred cell. 
 
 " My Ian' 1 " she sobbed, turning away. 
 " Whin I see where the two o' thim has got 
 to, through knowin' me, I dunno how I kin 
 bear it."
 
 XXIV 
 
 In Which Peggy Figures Like a Heroine of 
 High Romance 
 
 UP-STAIRS, in the captain's office, a 
 young man sat writing rapidly in a 
 stenographic note-book. Burns and 
 the captain and one or two others looked on 
 with strained attention. 
 
 The moments were tense with drama ; for, 
 down-stairs, little Peg was making history 
 helping to write the first chapter in the 
 criminal records of the dictagraph, a device 
 which promises to revolutionize the sphere 
 of evidence. Every word she spoke, every 
 word spoken to her, was transmitted from 
 the skillfully concealed recording disc to the 
 receiver up-stairs, and written down in the 
 presence of witnesses including a notary. 
 
 What worth the dictagraph may have 
 when wrong-doers have begun to suspect its 
 presence and to talk to it, mendaciously re- 
 serving their real sentiments for expression 
 only on tramps in the open country is hard 
 to determine now. But there could be no 
 suspicion of disingenuousness in Peggy or 
 
 201
 
 202 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 Tom, neither of whom had ever heard of 
 such an instrument. 
 
 " For this case, it is almost like a miraculous 
 intervention," Burns remarked. " The boy 
 had everything against him, and absolutely no 
 way to prove his innocence. And while we 
 contend that the state must prove guilt, we 
 have to admit that conviction on circumstan- 
 tial evidence is likely to be as much because the 
 prisoner could not prove his innocence as be- 
 cause the state could infer his guilt. Captain, 
 that boy has suffered far too much for what he 
 did not do. Can't you release him to-night? 
 Parole him to me, or make me responsible 
 for his appearance to-morrow morning so he 
 may be formally discharged by the court ? " 
 
 The captain looked doubtful. " I don't be- 
 lieve I can, Burns. You see, he's booked for 
 conspiracy with intent to kill. But I'll do 
 what I can : I'll bring him up here and make 
 him as comfortable in mind and body as 
 if he was a star witness." 
 
 " All right that'll do. And I don't mind 
 telling you that I haven't been as glad about 
 anything in a long time as I am to see that 
 boy cleared. If he had been implicated, he 
 might have helped me to a clue I need but 
 I'll get that somehow ; and I'm glad it doesn't 
 have to come through him."
 
 HEROINE OF HIGH ROMANCE 203 
 
 When Peggy came up-stairs, Burns was 
 not the only one whose heart beat with grate- 
 ful gladness because of the joyful surprise 
 that awaited her. She was a pathetic wee 
 thing indeed, with her tear-stained face and 
 her effort to be self-controlled so she could 
 tell Mr. Burns about Petie and the man who 
 watched their shop on Friday night. 
 
 " Could I spake to you ? " she entreated. 
 
 Burns nodded to the others, and they left. 
 
 Then she told him. 
 
 He listened, gravely ; when she came to 
 Petie's part in it, he smiled. 
 
 " You think that's nothin' to go by ?" she 
 cried, challengingly. 
 
 " I think it's a good deal to go by," he cor- 
 rected. " I'm smiling to think how pleased 
 Petie will probably be to go on a case with 
 me. And I've got something even better 
 than that to smile about, Peggy. I'm going 
 to hire Petie to tend the ' imporium ' to-mor- 
 row night, so that young man of yours can 
 take you to a show and celebrate." 
 
 " Young man o' mine ? " 
 
 "Well, if he isn't yours he ought to be. I 
 mean Oliphant. He was in pretty deep- 
 but you've got him out." 
 
 "Me?" 
 
 He explained.
 
 204 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 Peggy's mouth quivered piteously. " This 
 ain't a trick ? " she pleaded. 
 
 " I know I deserved that," he admitted. 
 " But when we're trying to be just, Peggy, 
 we must use any means the law allows to get 
 the truth. I don't believe in the third degree 
 but until somebody invents a mind-reader 
 I guess I'll have to use what you call tricks 
 to surprise people into telling the truth. This 
 is on the level. I only wish it held some 
 hope for that poor devil of a dago." 
 
 "Don't it?" 
 
 " Not a bit. But we'll try to be grateful 
 for what we've got. Now, I kind of think 
 you've earned the happiness of telling that 
 boy he's cleared. Wait here." 
 
 The word brought to Tom was that the 
 captain wanted to see him. But when the 
 door of the captain's office was opened, and 
 he was directed in, only Peggy was there 
 in evidence. 
 
 Police regulations do not permit of all the 
 scruples of polite society. 
 
 " According to all the rules," the captain 
 suggested, " that ought to be a regular third 
 act scene for the By- Joe." 
 
 Burns smiled. For he could read in the 
 constrained self-consciousness of Tom and 
 little Peg a drama too deep for words.
 
 XXV 
 
 In Which You Visit the Peggy Chib and 
 Say Good-Bye 
 
 CHRISTMAS had come and gone. 
 Anne was disappointed because the 
 blessed festival could not be cele- 
 brated in the Peggy Club. But it takes time, 
 even with the strong urging of much money, 
 not to get people to move out of one tene- 
 ment into another, but to reconstruct the 
 rooms in accordance with such ideas as Anne 
 had for the new club. 
 
 " Christmas never meant anything to me 
 compared with what it does this year," Anne 
 told her father. "The manger and the shep- 
 herds were like parts of a pretty story that I 
 loved but didn't really understand. Now I 
 know! There was no other way to help. 
 . . . Peggy has taught me this." 
 
 One of the first things she attended to was 
 the bambini. Anne spoke Italian fluently 
 and had a passionate love for Italy and her 
 people. She was not easily able to over- 
 come Ferucci's fear, greater for the wife and 
 babies even than for himself, and get him to 
 205
 
 206 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 give her directions for sending them some- 
 thing to make a merry Christmas. It was to 
 go to them as from him ; if he did not want 
 to trust her with the name, he might send the 
 money or get some one to send it. But 
 Luigi had no one who might do so much for 
 him, and finally he consented to give Anne 
 the directions. It was she who took the 
 Italian Consul to see him for this reason : 
 Anne had suggested to her father that, per- 
 haps, if Ferucci on investigation were shown 
 to be a harmless sort of creature, it might be 
 possible to plead for a suspension of sentence ; 
 for his release or parole to her father or to 
 some responsible person acting for Kimbal- 
 ton. But Ferucci was thrown into a panic at 
 the suggestion. Anne had lived in Italy long 
 enough to understand. She could not, how- 
 ever, believe that his fears were valid in this 
 country. This she asked his consul to assure 
 him. But the consul could not, because he 
 could not know who had threatened Ferucci. 
 Until Burns had finished unravelling a few 
 more mysteries principally those which con- 
 cerned McNabb, and Petie's story of what 
 he saw when he followed Burns and Tom on 
 that Friday night and learned that he was 
 not the only one who went to see whither 
 they were bound Luigi Ferucci was really
 
 THE PEGGY CLUB 207 
 
 better off, and happier, in jail, awaiting the 
 big trial that was imminent. He was made 
 glad by a Christmas letter from home, and 
 by the thought of what the splendid remit- 
 tance would mean to them. 
 
 " Down state," in the Oliphant home, there 
 was real Christmas joy, too ; because Andrew 
 Kimbalton had the case of James Oliphant be- 
 fore the Pardon Board. Tom went home for 
 Christmas. But the Kimbaltons exchanged 
 knowing smiles because, although he had 
 been told he might stay till after New Year's, 
 he was back again on the evening of the 
 twenty-sixth. 
 
 On Christmas Eve there was a tree in 
 Peggy's kitchen. It wasn't a very big tree, 
 and the fruit it bore was not great in size but 
 it was marvellous in quantity : there seemed 
 to be something on it for "awful many 
 people." When Tony-of-the-wondrous-smile 
 came in to get his " comics," there was some- 
 thing on the glittering tree for him, and there 
 were even other somethings that he might 
 take home, clasped ecstatically against his 
 palpitating little breast. There was some- 
 thing for Alma, and something for Katie 
 and something for Ida and something for 
 Hazel. Other girls, of whom you have not 
 heard because our little chronicle could not
 
 208 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 tell all, found each a bit of a Christmas gift 
 and a lot of Christmas spirit. Petie had 
 been made so inexpressibly exalted by his 
 association with Burns who found delight 
 in humouring the youngster as much as the 
 desperately serious business in hand would 
 allow that he was able to take only the most 
 condescending kind of interest in so babyish 
 a thing as a Christmas tree ; but the way in 
 which he lent his attention and his help was 
 no small part of the Christmas joy to some 
 folks. Then there was Polly. It seemed as 
 if Anne and Alma between them were going 
 to accomplish for Polly what Peggy in her 
 blind unselfishness had never done. Not 
 without many discouragements, of course ! 
 But there was hope. And Peggy, to the de- 
 light of Anne and Alma, disclosed a sudden 
 yearning for a pretty dress : one not too 
 pretty to tend shop in, but just pretty enough 
 to I'm sorry that I can't show you the look 
 on Peggy's face as she tried to explain : 
 the light in her eyes and the flush in her 
 cheeks and the sweet telltale twitching of 
 the corners of her mouth. It seemed to the 
 two girls that there could not be a dress in 
 all the world pretty enough to meet their 
 idea of what little Peg should have. Yet 
 this must be hers in the truest sense of being
 
 THE PEGGY CLUB 209 
 
 her choice ; so they made her " help Santa 
 Claus " by selecting just exactly what she 
 wanted. 
 
 But after all, Christmas joys were almost 
 overshadowed by what was going on up- 
 stairs where the parlour floor of the old 
 house was being transformed for and by the 
 Peggy Club. 
 
 The girls worked at it every evening, and 
 Anne gave a great deal of daytime to it. 
 New Year's Eve was to be the " grand open- 
 ing." And as you get a better understand- 
 ing of some things in their preparation than 
 in their ready-for-company completeness, I'll 
 ask you in about seven o'clock when an in- 
 finitude of last touches are being supplied. 
 
 Of course Peggy's in command. But I 
 don't blame you if, at first sight, you hardly 
 know her. Alma has unbraided that tight 
 little braid of bright hair, and fluffed it softly 
 and pinned it up bewitchingly. And Peggy 
 has shining new shoes on those wee feet 
 that twinkle here and there and everywhere 
 all in one superlatively busy second. Then 
 there's the new dress. You can't see it very 
 well, because Peggy has an apron on. But 
 perhaps you wouldn't think it was much of a 
 dress. For it's only a warm flannel, although 
 the shade of green is surprisingly becoming
 
 210 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 to Peggy. Anyhow, it has all the things she 
 has ever dreamed about when she had time to 
 dream about clothes : it has silk braid on it, 
 and gold buttons, and a lace collar. And 
 down-stairs in a milk bottle is a big red rose 
 that Peggy's going to wear when the party 
 really begins. 
 
 Everybody else is fixed up too; but I don't 
 believe you care about how any of the rest 
 look. You want to see the Peggy Club. 
 
 Well, having come up those sagging 
 wooden steps down which poor Alma once 
 went with intent so desperate, you have en- 
 tered what was once the family hall but is 
 now the common hallway of the tenement. 
 The Peggy Club does not embrace you until 
 you have passed through the door into what 
 was once the family front parlour. It has 
 been newly-papered as the whole floor has 
 and you probably groan when you see the 
 paper. Anne nearly did. It is red, and has 
 gilt figures in it that set you wondering what 
 form in art or nature could have been dis- 
 torted for their production. Never mind ! 
 Peggy chose it. And Peggy doesn't have 
 to rack her brain to think what the girls 
 would like: she knows. She is responsible, 
 too, for the Nottingham lace curtains, and 
 for their being white instead of ecru as Anne
 
 THE PEGGY CLUB 211 
 
 ventured to suggest; and for the tasselled 
 " drape " on the shiny new piano ; and for 
 the centre table, and the lamp with the red 
 roses on its china globe. And Anne, remem- 
 bering certain " Mission Parlours " she had 
 seen in Homes and Welfare places, and how 
 they chilled one with their cold air of fail- 
 ure, forebore making a single restraining 
 criticism. 
 
 There is an old-fashioned marble mantel, 
 not unlike those in Lucy Kimbalton's home ; 
 and they have a new grate for the disused 
 fireplace all the girls favoured that. There 
 has, of course, to be a stove too : a self-feeder, 
 heavily nickelled. But they like the idea of 
 sitting around an open fire. I won't weary 
 you with too many details, but I'd like you 
 to note the pictures. Alma and Ida spent a 
 Saturday evening on Blue Island Avenue se- 
 lecting them. One pictures a young man of 
 effeminate beauty, clad in the costume of 
 young Mozart's day and seated at a harpsi- 
 chord ; close beside him, her head leaning on 
 his shoulder, is a young girl in a white dress. 
 Another represents a terrace scene, probably 
 a French chateau, in which two elegantly and 
 fancifully attired young lovers seem to have 
 quarrelled about some elegant and fanciful 
 grievance, and a third party is trying to in-
 
 212 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 tervene in the interests of that reconciliation 
 so full of bliss one cannot blame lovers for 
 the quarrels with which they contend for it. 
 Then there are two pictures also with a 
 French chateau flavour, depicting a Wedding 
 and a Christening, in which nobody if we 
 may judge by clothes is of rank lower than 
 a Marquis or a Marquise. Ida was strongly 
 in favour of a copy of " The Exiles of Tibe- 
 rius," but Alma dissuaded her. 
 
 Now I know your eye has gone roving, 
 and you are wondering, in a puzzled way, 
 about that back parlour. I don't blame you. 
 What are all those strange little places, like 
 the stalls in an old tap-room ? They have 
 no books in them, for the book their occu- 
 pants will wish to read is the book of the fu- 
 ture ; no pictures, because the young people 
 who will sit in them will paint their own 
 lovely pictures with which no art in the world 
 can compete. They are the cozy corners 
 wherein, as sufficiently screened from the rest 
 of the world as the sons and daughters of the 
 crowded tenements can expect ever to be, 
 the most precious thing in all the world may 
 be tenderly nurtured instead of being cast 
 into the streets, the saloon dance halls or like 
 places, to grow rank and often noisome. 
 
 Can you see Petie ? Did you ever see an
 
 THE PEGGY CLUB 213 
 
 expression of such vast inscrutability ? From 
 a field position suitable to his generalship he 
 is directing the hanging of the last picture. 
 Tom, on the step-ladder, is glad he can with- 
 out offense turn his face to the wall and smile 
 when Petie's patronage becomes too excru- 
 ciating. 
 
 Polly is absorbed in Andrew Kimbalton's 
 gift, just arrived : a phonograph. She has it 
 playing, "Oh, You Beautiful Doll," and is 
 dancing to the tune trying its tempo. 
 
 Anne is everywhere now at the front door, 
 persuading the deliveryman to take the drip- 
 ping ice-cream kegs around to the rear, and 
 now answering Tom's question about the 
 height of the picture, and now showing Polly 
 how to soften the sounds of the phonograph 
 because Peggy pleads that she " can't hear 
 herself think." 
 
 Alma is immersed in the commissary, but 
 emerges now and then to ask a question or 
 to comment on some new touch of prepara- 
 tion. Alma's work is hard, and she won't give 
 it up until she has found for herself a better 
 job. She is too jealous of her friendship with 
 Anne to admit anything into it but a fair give 
 and take. But all the old defiance and bitter- 
 ness are gone. Because hard work doesn't 
 hurt the spirit, and Alma is happy, now
 
 214 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 happy in warm human relationships. Strange 
 that, in a world full of lonely people who 
 need nothing so much as one another, any 
 one should go starving for lack of friend- 
 ship ! 
 
 Now here come Ida and Katie. They 
 have got a room together, and Ida is trying 
 to take a sort of responsible care of Katie 
 who has never had care taken of her be- 
 fore. 
 
 Katie has brought a donation for the Club. 
 She made it herself, and she is bursting with 
 pride and importance : it is a crocheted tidy 
 for the piano-stool. 
 
 " I know it ain't handy to have a tidy 
 there," Ida explains to Peggy, whispering. 
 " It'll get mussed when it's sat on, an' be in 
 the way. But I couldn't tell Katie she's 
 been so happy makin' it ! " 
 
 Peggy nods comprehendingly, and lovingly 
 squeezes Ida's arm. " I know. I bet it's the 
 first thing that poor little kid iver done to try 
 an* fix up a place like she fancied it. Say, 
 Ida ! whin I look at that tidy I bet I'll a' most 
 cry/" 
 
 She does ! And Anne Kimbalton goes 
 hastily into one of the little " stalls," her heart 
 so full that for a moment she has to struggle 
 for self-control.
 
 THE PEGGY CLUB 215 
 
 Linger, if you want to, while some come 
 whom you do not know : girls and young 
 men. And keep dry-eyed if you can / 
 can't ! when Hazel stands with timid bold- 
 ness in the doorway and is welcomed with a 
 superb lack of such effusiveness as might be- 
 tray you and me and lose Hazel to us for- 
 ever. . . . 
 
 It is well on past midnight, and the party 
 is over. Alma, in the kitchen, is clearing 
 away the last of the dishes. 
 
 In the front room, by the embers of the 
 open fire, sit little Peg and Tom talking it 
 over. 
 
 Never mind what they have been saying. 
 What one says at such a time counts for 
 little, anyway. But I think Peg must have 
 murmured something about being up in a 
 little while to get Petie started with his 
 papers. And then I think Tom said some- 
 thing about a day not too distant when he 
 has " made good," and Peggy shall not turn 
 out in dark, chill winter mornings like that 
 on which you first saw her. There is a won- 
 derful look of rapture in her face when he 
 says that ; even in the firelight it is plain to 
 see. But presently she shakes her head. 
 Evidently she has tried to think of a life that
 
 216 THE PENNY PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 has naught to do with the "imporium" 
 and she can't. 
 
 " Wanst," she says, " I read a piece o' 
 po'try that I liked awful much. It was about 
 some wan that says : 
 
 ' L'ave me live in a house by the side of a road, 
 An' be a fri'nd to man.' 
 
 An' I kin' of fixed it over fer to suit me, like 
 this: 
 
 " L'ave me live in me shop on Halsted Strate, 
 An' be a fri'nd whin I can. 
 
 I guess there ain't no spot on earth fer me 
 but this here corner. An' whin I think o' 
 heaven I belave I always think o' me there 
 wid Martinelli on wan side o' me an' 
 Levinsky on the other." 
 
 For a long moment Tom says nothing. 
 His man's pride is struggling with a very 
 considerable hurt ; for men have not yet 
 grown used to wooing women who will not 
 leave their own kingdom but must be loved 
 where they have made their world. 
 
 " And where am I ? " he blurts out. 
 
 Peggy laughs at his petulance ; and as she 
 rises she bends over and kisses him. In a
 
 THE PEGGY CLUB 217 
 
 way it is a kiss not totally unlike one she 
 might give Petie ; only she does not know 
 this yet. 
 
 " You're betwane thim too," she says. 
 
 Ah, well ! he may be ! 
 
 And now, I hope you're glad as I am, to 
 leave dear little Peggy in her " shop on Hal- 
 sted Strate," still giving her penny a day and 
 looking for opportunities to be a friend when 
 she can. 
 
 The usual way with heroines we love is to 
 suggest, in closing, their transplanting to an- 
 other sphere one that has been created for 
 them. Can you think of anything you'd 
 rather have for Peggy than that which she 
 has made for herself with her love and her 
 faith and her penny philanthropy ? / can't 1 
 
 Printed in the United Stales of America
 
 A 000 043 735 o