"Me?" and Katy laughed incredulously. "When would I get time? and what would I make it on? We don't have a fire but Sundays, and only a show of one then. And I don't want it, either: I ain't used to it." "What do you live on, Katy?" "Why, we did have breakfast and tea here--coffee and meat for breakfast, and bread and butter and tea for supper. I get a cream-cake or some drop-cakes for dinner, but for a good while I've just paid a dollar a week for my share of the room, and bought something for breakfast--'most always a pie. You can get a splendid pie for five cents, and a pretty good one for three; and it's plenty too. That's the way the girls in the bag-factory do. They don't get but three dollars a week, and it takes seventy-five cents for their room, so they haven't got anything for board. Mary Jones says she's settled on pie, because it stays by better'n anything, and once in a while she goes down to Fulton Market and has some coffee. I do too, but it spoils you for next day. You keep thinking how'd you'd like a cup when the chills go crawling all over you, but it's no use." "Couldn't it be made in the store? The girls could club together, and it would cost much less than your pies and candy. The gas is always burning, and you could have a little water-boiler." "You don't know much about stores to think that. Why, Mr. Levy watches like a cat to see we don't eat peanuts or candy: we're fined if he catches us. I've a good mind to take board at the 'Home,' only I should hate to be bossed 'round, and you can't get in very often, either, it's so crowded. But I don't mind so much now, for you see"--Katy's pale cheeks grew pink--"Jim and I don't mean to wait long. He has ten dollars a week, and we can manage on that. He says he's 'most poisoned with the stuff his boarding-house keeper gives him, and he wants me to keep house. I just laugh. That's a servant-girl's work: 'tain't mine." The old story. I had seen "Jim," and knew him as rather a sensible-looking young fellow for an East Side clerk in a cheap store. What sort of future could lie before them? What help could come from this untrained child, herself helpless and with too limited intelligence to understand what demand the new life made upon her? and could any way be found to open her eyes and make her desire better knowledge? Busy with this always fresh problem, I had come to a side street leading to the market from which two or three small groceries draw their supplies, and stopped for a moment to look at the flabby, half-decayed vegetables, the coarse beef and measly-looking pork from which comes the sickly, heavy smell preceding positive putrefaction.