“I was going to tell you about it,” said Miss Bates, “if you hadn’t interrupted me.

“Of course, you know about Maggie Brown, who stops here. Well, she’s worth $40,000,000. She lives in Jersey in a ten-dollar flat. She’s always got more cash on hand than half a dozen business candidates for vice-president. I don’t know whether she carries it in her stocking or not, but I know she’s mighty popular down in the part of the town where they worship the golden calf.

“Well, about two weeks ago, Mrs. Brown stops at the door and rubbers at me for ten minutes. I’m sitting with my side to her, striking off some manifold copies of a copper-mine proposition for a nice old man from Tonopah. But I always see everything all around me. When I’m hard at work I can see things through my side-combs; and I can leave one button unbuttoned in the back of my shirt-waist and see who’s behind me. I didn’t look around, because I make from eighteen to twenty dollars a week, and I didn’t have to.

“That evening at knocking-off time she sends for me to come up to her apartment. I expected to have to typewrite about two thousand words of notes-of-hand, liens and contracts, with a ten-cent tip in sight; but I went. Well, Man, I was certainly surprised. Old Maggie Brown had turned human.

“ ‘Child,’ says she, ‘you’re the most beautiful creature I ever saw in my life. I want you to quit your work and come and live with me. I’ve no kith or kin,’ says she, ‘except a husband and a son or two, and I hold no communication with any of ’em. They’re extravagant burdens on a hard-working woman. I want you to be a daughter to me. They say I’m stingy and mean, and the papers print lies about my doing my own cooking and washing. It’s a lie,’ she goes on. ‘I put my washing out, except the handkerchiefs and stockings and petticoats and collars, and light stuff like that. I’ve got forty million dollars in cash and stocks and bonds that are as negotiable as Standard Oil, preferred, at a church fair. I’m a lonely old woman, and I need companionship. You’re the most beautiful human being I ever saw,’ says she. ‘Will you come and live with me? I’ll show ’em whether I can spend money or not,’ she says.

“Well, Man, what would you have done? Of course, I fell to it. And, to tell you the truth, I began to like old Maggie. It wasn’t all on account of the forty millions and what she could do for me. I was kind of lonesome in the world, too. Everybody’s got to have somebody they can explain to about the pain in their left shoulder and how fast patent-leather shoes wear out when they begin to crack. And you can’t talk about such things to men you meet in hotels—they’re looking for just such openings.

“So I gave up my job in the hotel and went with Mrs. Brown. I certainly seemed to have a mash on her. She’d look at me for half an hour at a time when I was sitting, reading, or looking at the magazines.

“One time I says to her: ‘Do I remind you of some deceased relative or friend of your childhood, Mrs. Brown? I’ve noticed you give me a pretty good optical inspection from time to time.’

“ ‘You have a face,’ she says, ‘exactly like a dear friend of mine—the best friend I ever had. But I like you for yourself, child, too,’ she says.

“And say, Man, what do you suppose she did? Loosened up like a Marcel wave in the surf at Coney. She took me to a swell dressmaker and gave her á la carte to fit me out—money no object. They were rush orders, and madame locked the front door and put the whole force to work.

“Then we moved to—where do you think?—no: guess again—that’s right—the Hotel Bonton. We had a six-room apartment; and it cost $100 a day. I saw the bill. I began to love that old lady.

“And then, Man, when my dresses began to come in—oh, I won’t tell you about ’em! you couldn’t understand. And I began to call her Aunt Maggie. You’ve read about Cinderella, of course. Well, what Cinderella said when the prince fitted that 3½ A on her foot was a hard-luck story compared to the things I told myself.

“Then Aunt Maggie says she is going to give me a coming-out banquet in the Bonton that’ll make moving Vans of all the old Dutch families on Fifth Avenue.