At that time mothers on the lower East Side were rioting as a protest against the high price of milk and potatoes On the grocery floor of one of the largest department stores, where all foodstuffs were usually to be had at rock-bottom prices, onions were priced to me at thirty-nine cents the pound, white potatoes at twenty-seven, and butter at ninety-three. Three small bananas were offered and bought at twenty cents—a Saturday-night bargain. Of course Alice and I could afford none of these luxuries. Having discovered black-eyed peas at ten cents a pound, and that a pound was enough for four dinners, we vied with each other in proclaiming our fondness for black-eyed peas. Another discovery was our mutual relish of peanut butter. We consumed it morning, noon, and night. As a substitute for meat we never found its equal. During this time, on several occasions, I had been aroused by a repetition of that piercing shriek. Because no one else heard it I allowed Mrs. Wilkins and Alice to half-persuade me that it was a cat. Three times I got out of bed, and looking out my window tried to discover in the brilliantly lighted back yards the cat which could so exactly imitate a human being in agony. About ten days before Christmas the entire population of our top floor, along with a good many roomers in other parts of the house, was aroused. The shrieks and groans came from the room of the young milliner. After pounding in vain on the milliner’s door the organist ran downstairs and returned followed by the landlady with her bunch of pass-keys. After they entered the room we saw the restaurant-keeper hurry out. Later he returned with a bottle of whiskey. While all this took place Alice, the newspaperman, and I had been kept in our rooms under the stern guardianship of the policeman’s widow. “You don’t know what you’ll get mixed up in in a roomin’-house,” she warned us. “For all you can tell all who goes in that room will be hauled into court as witnesses—maybe put in jail.” The next morning the little organist came to ask Alice and me to use our influence with Mrs. Brown, the landlady, to prevent her from forcing the milliner to leave the house. “Mrs. Howard was in a sort of stupor last night when we got in her room,” the organist told us, referring to the milliner. “She seemed to be suffering intensely, and didn’t come round until she had taken a stiff drink of whiskey and I had rubbed her side. She only wants to stay until after Christmas; then she won’t be so rushed with work and can look around for another room, but Mrs. Brown says she was drunk last night, and must get out.” Later, on my way to work, I stopped at the door of Mrs. Brown’s room for the purpose of speaking to her about the milliner. Answering my knock she came to the door, her face wreathed in smiles. Without giving me time to open my lips, she exclaimed: