“Why don’t you get some of those hotel fellows to give you their laundry?” he asked of Jennie after she had related the afternoon’s experiences. “It would be better than scrubbing the stairs.” “How do you get it?” she replied. “Why, ask the clerk, of course.” This plan struck Jennie as very much worth while. “Don’t you ever speak to me if you meet me around there,” he cautioned her a little later, privately. “Don’t you let on that you know me.” “Why?” she asked, innocently. “Well, you know why,” he answered, having indicated before that when they looked so poor he did not want to be disgraced by having to own them as relatives. “Just you go on by. Do you hear?” “All right,” she returned, meekly, for although this youth was not much over a year her senior, his superior will dominated. The next day on their way to the hotel she spoke of it to her mother. “Bass said we might get some of the laundry of the men at the hotel to do.” Mrs. Gerhardt, whose mind had been straining all night at the problem of adding something to the three dollars which her six afternoons would bring her, approved of the idea. “So we might,” she said. “I’ll ask that clerk.” When they reached the hotel, however, no immediate opportunity presented itself. They worked on until late in the afternoon. Then, as fortune would have it, the housekeeper sent them in to scrub up the floor behind the clerk’s desk. That important individual felt very kindly toward mother and daughter. He liked the former’s sweetly troubled countenance and the latter’s pretty face. So he listened graciously when Mrs. Gerhardt ventured meekly to put the question which she had been revolving in her mind all the afternoon. “Is there any gentleman here,” she said, “who would give me his washing to do? I’d be so very much obliged for it.” The clerk looked at her, and again recognized that absolute want was written all over her anxious face. “Let’s see,” he answered, thinking of Senator Brander and Marshall Hopkins. Both were charitable men, who would be more than glad to aid a poor woman. “You go up and see Senator Brander,” he continued. “He’s in twenty-two. Here,” he added, writing out the number, “you go up and tell him I sent you.” Mrs. Gerhardt took the card with a tremor of gratefulness. Her eyes looked the words she could not say. “That’s all right,” said the clerk, observing her emotion. “You go right up. You’ll find him in his room now.” With the greatest diffidence Mrs. Gerhardt knocked at number twenty-two. Jennie stood silently at her side. After a moment the door was opened, and in the full radiance of the bright room stood the Senator. Attired in a handsome smoking-coat, he looked younger than at their first meeting. “Well, madam,” he said, recognizing the couple, and particularly the daughter, “what can I do for you?” Very much abashed, the mother hesitated in her reply. “We would like to know if you have any washing you could let us have to do?”