“Risks!” she scoffed, in the act of stripping off one wet and tattered stocking. “That’s what my burglar and I disputed about. We’ve been sitting on a bench in Washington Square since twelve——” “Of all things! And the ground covered with snow.” “He brushed off a bench and I am never conscious of my body when enthused,” she reproved me. “He is a stubborn man, but he finally had to admit the justice of my argument—considering the risks in an undertaking is the quickest way to insure defeat. Only a weak individuality will consider risks. Once I make up my mind to do a thing, I do it.” She was rubbing one foot with my face-towel after having tossed her stocking on my pin-cushion. “While making up your mind, don’t you consider the risks?” I inquired, huddling up in the far corner of the bed. The thought of having her cold feet come in contact with my flesh made me feel like climbing over the headboard. “Not at all. Not at _all_,” she replied emphatically, as she let fly her second wet stocking and it landed on the fresh shirt-waist I had been so careful to hang on the back of a chair. “When the colossal idea of opening a tea-room struck me, instead of considering risks as a person of weaker mentality undoubtedly would, I went ahead and did. Now see where I am!—until this freeze came and burst my water-pipes and the gas froze on me I was feeding half the village.” “Half the village,” I murmured, at a loss for words—only a few days before Christmas her younger sister, a hard-working, serious girl, had been forced to pay two hundred and fifty dollars to keep Hildegarde’s eating-place from being closed. Having lived in the house with Hildegarde for more than three months, I realized the hopelessness of attempting to make her see the truth, so I changed the subject. “You didn’t finish telling me about the two poets. Did they go on a wedding trip?” “They are spending the night in my shop,” she told me, still busy rubbing her toes. “What on earth?” I questioned, so amazed that I forgot to notice that she was slipping her feet between my sheets. “You have no sleeping arrangements—only small tables and narrow benches.” “Joe Ellen said it was better than taking Harris to her room and to-morrow morning being ordered to leave the house or produce their marriage license. They don’t intend the general public to know of their marriage—not until they find a publisher for their first book of poems in collaboration.” “Oh!” was my meek reply, as I wondered why she had let me into such an important secret. “They might have gone to a hotel,” was my next remark, and being a normal idea it was so far out of focus that it impressed me as an inspiration. “Hotel?” she questioned indignantly. “That would have killed every bit of romance. Besides, Joe Ellen only had seven dollars and a half—a check she received for one of her short poems. Then, of course, as Mr. Freeland pointed out, there was Harris’s clothes.” “Who is he?”