“My dear girl,” replied my friend Lewis, “I just love to instill knowledge into your hungry, young mind, but fifty cents are always full fifty cents to me, and if I stand here stuffing you with valuable information, I shall be late to rehearsal, and fifty cents forfeit will be torn from my unwilling pocket-book. So _en avant_,” and we both turned our faces stageward. The next day was very stormy and bitter cold. My mother insisted upon my wrapping her shawl about me as an extra protection, but I had not gone more than a block or two before I was in trouble. The wind tore at me, the small pins could not stand the strain, they gave way, open went the shawl. The wind caught it, and slapped my face with it, and flung it flapping noisily through the air. I grabbed for it, jumped up at it, waltzed around and tried to catch it; but truth to tell that shawl could be found most any place in the street except on my shoulders. While I was laboring like a ship in a high sea, I heard some one knocking on a window-pane, and just as I began thinking I should have to scud under bare poles for home, the knocking was repeated so very loudly that I looked up, and, to my astonishment, there stood Mrs. Worden! I was amazed, because I had supposed the house to be unoccupied. The lower part was so, but at the upper window she was standing and making signs for me to cross over to her. Still wrestling madly with the shawl, I plunged over. The old lady opened the front door, showing an empty and bare hall, and holding tightly to the door itself, to keep from being blown backward, she motioned with her head for me to come in. I obeyed, and stood leaning against the unfriendly-looking wall, trying to regain my breath. Mrs. Worden smiled sardonically at me, and remarked: “I don’t think you will get to your precious rehearsal to-day at that rate of speed. I’ve been watching you prancing about with that shawl, and I’ve brought you down this.” She held out to me a shawl-pin. As I took it, I found it was yet warm from the hand of its maker since it was formed of a stout darning needle with a ball of red sealing wax for a head. She had seen my trouble and had hastily made this shawl-pin especially for me. I was surprised beyond speech for a moment, and she mistook my silence, for she began to jeer. “Oh, use it, use it! If you can keep that shawl about you it may save you from a sickness. Then you can hide the pin from the sight of those lords and ladies at your great, fine theatre. They are so artistic, I fear its roughness and lack of finish might jar upon them.” But I shook my head, and, smiling broadly at her, I said: “It’s no use, Mrs. Worden, you can never frighten me again. I know you now, and you are good and kind.”