"There, there, Shorty!" says she. "I knew better, only I've been gold-bricked so much lately that I'd almost suspect my own grandmother. I've got two maids who steal my dresses and rings; a lady companion who nags me about the way I talk, and who hates me alive because I can afford to hire her; and even the hotel manager makes me pay double rates because I look too young for a real widow. Do you know, there are times when I almost miss the late Dippy. Were you ever real lonesome, Shorty?" "Once or twice," says I, "when I was far from Broadway." "That's nothing," says she, "to being lonesome _on_ Broadway. And I've been so lonesome in a theatre box, with two thousand people in plain sight, that I've dropped tears down on the trombone player in the orchestra. And I was lonesome just now, when I picked you up back there. I had been into that big jewelry store, buying things I didn't want, just for the sake of having some one to talk to." "Ah, say," says I, "cut it in smaller chunks, Sadie. I'm no pelican." "You don't believe me?" says she. "I know this little old burg too well," says I. "Why, with a hundred-dollar bill I can buy more society than you could put in a hall." "But don't you see, Shorty," says she, "that the kind you can buy isn't worth having? You don't buy yours, do you? And I don't want to buy mine. I want to swap even. I'm not a freak, nor a foreigner, nor a quarantine suspect. Look at all these women going past--what's the difference between us? But they're not lonesome, I'll bet. They have friends and dear enemies by the hundreds, while I haven't either. There isn't a single home on this whole island where I can step up and ring the front door-bell. I feel like a tramp hanging to the back of a parlor-car. What good does my money do me? Suppose I want to take dinner at a swell restaurant--I wouldn't know the things to order, and I'd be afraid of the waiters. Think of that, Shorty." I tried to; but it was a strain. If anyone else had put it up to me that Sadie Sullivan, with a roll of real money as big as a bale of cotton, could lose her nerve just because she didn't have a visitin'-list, I'd have told 'em to drop the pipe. She was giving me straight goods, though. Why, her lip was tremblin' like a lost kid's. "Chuck it!" says I. "For a girl that had a whole bunch of Johnnies on the waitin' list, and her with only one best dress to her name at the time, you give me an ache. I don't set up for no great judge of form and figure; but my eyesight's still good, I guess, and if I was choosin' a likely looker, I'd back you against the field." That makes her grin a little, and she pats my hand kind of sisterly like. "It isn't men I want, you goose; it's women--my own kind," says she, and the next minute she gives me the nudge and whispers: "Now, watch--the one in the chiffon Panama."