"All right," said Mrs. Ridder accommodatingly; "now that Bob and Ike are gitting fifty cents a day, it ain't so hard to make out. I'll be gittin' a new dress first thing, you know." "I seen one up at the corner!" said Joe. "A new dress?" "Naw, a dressmaker. She's got out her sign." "What's her name?" asked Mrs. Ridder, keen with interest. "Mrs. R. Beaver, Modiste," repeated Joe from the sign that floated in letters of gold in his memory. "I knowed a Mrs. Beaver wunst, up on Eleventh Street--a big, fat woman that got in a fuss with the preacher and smacked his jaws." "Did she have any children?" asked Joe. "Seems like there was one, a pretty little tow-headed girl." "That's her," announced Joe conclusively. "What was her name?" "Lawsee, I don't know. I never would 'a' ricollected Mrs. Beaver 'cepten she was such a tarnashious woman, always a-tearin' up stumps, and never happy unless she was rippitin' 'bout somethin'. _What_ you want? A needle and thread to mend your coat? Why, what struck you? You been wearin' it that a-way for a month. You better leave it be 'til I git time to fix it." But Joe had determined to work out the salvation of his own wardrobe. Late in the evening after the family had retired, he sat before the stove with back humped and knees drawn up trying to coax a coarse thread through a small needle. Surely no rich man need have any fear about entering the kingdom of heaven since Joe Ridder managed to get that particular thread through the eye of that particular needle! But when a boy is put at a work-bench at twelve years of age and does the same thing day in and day out for seven long years, he may have lost all of the things that youth holds dear, but one thing he is apt to have learned, a dogged, plodding, unquestioning patience that shoves silently along at the appointed task until the work is done. By midnight all the rents were mended and a large new patch adorned each elbow. The patches, to be sure, were blue, and the coat was black, but the stitches were set with mechanical regularity. Joe straightened his aching shoulders and held the garment at arm's length with a smile. It was his first votive offering at the shrine of love. The effect of Joe's efforts were prompt and satisfactory. The next day being Sunday, he spent the major part of it in passing and repassing the house on the corner, only going home between times to remove the mud from his shoes and give an extra brush to his hair. The girl, meanwhile, was devoting her day to sweeping off the front pavement, a scant three feet of pathway from her steps to the wooden gate. Every time Joe passed she looked up and smiled, and every time she smiled Joe suffered all the symptoms of locomotor ataxia!