Pretty Agnes' father, a longshoreman, had found his bread along the docks. None better ever-shaped for a boss stevedore, or trotted up a gangplank with a 280-pound sack of sugar on his back. One day he fell between the side of a moored ship and the stringpiece of the wharf; and the ship, being at that moment ground against the wharf by the swell from a passing steamer, he was crushed. Those who looked on called him a fool for having been killed in so poor a way. He was too dead to resent the criticism, and after that his widow, the mother of Pretty Agnes, took in washing. Her mother washed, and Pretty Agnes carried home the clothes. This went on for three years. One wind-blown afternoon, as the mother was hanging out clothes on the roof--a high one--and refreshing her energies with intermittent gin from the bottle of her neighbor, the generous Mrs. Callahan, she stepped backward down an airshaft. She struck the flags ten stories below, and left Pretty Agnes to look out for herself. Looking out for herself, Pretty Agnes worked in a sweatshop in Division Street. Here she made three dollars a week and needed five. The sweatshop owner--for she was a dream of loveliness, with a fog of blue-black hair and deep brown eyes--offered to make up the lacking two, and was accepted. Round, ripe, willowy, Pretty Agnes graduated from the Division Street sweatshop to a store in Twenty-third Street. There she served as a cloak model, making fourteen dollars a week while needing twenty. The manager of the cloak store was as generous as had been the owner of the sweatshop, and benevolently made up the absent six. For Pretty Agnes was lovelier than ever. All work and no play, makes Jack a dull boy. Also, it has the same effect on Jill. Pretty Agnes--she had a trunkful of good clothes and yearned to show them--went three nights a week to one of those dancing academies wherewith the East Side was and is rife. As she danced she met Indian Louie, and lost no time in loving him. Having advantage of her love, that seeker after doubtful dollars showed Pretty Agnes where and how she could make more money than would come to her as a cloak model in any Twenty-third Street store. Besides, he jealously disapproved of the benevolent manager, though, all things considered, it is hard to say why. Pretty Agnes, who had grown weary of the manager and to whom Louie's word was law, threw over both the manager and her cloak-model position. After which she walked the streets for Louie--as likewise did Mollie Squint--and, since he often beat her, continued to love him from the bottom of her heart.