Two avenues of escape were open, were even persistently presented, yet she would regard neither. To take what Hermann pleaded with her to accept, though her hungry heart and her underfed body cried out for it, would have been, she felt well assured, unfairly to handicap her best friend, and, as for turning into that other way--a way into which the streets on every hand seemed so easily to open, she was too wise to consider. "No thanks," she answered in her soul, as she walked by the leering satyrs, with her black head erect and her lips compressed--"not yet, if you please: not yet, nor never, I think, for starvin' seems some easier and a deal quicker, too." She had to repeat the words pretty often, for they had come to be a sort of incantation, almost a pious ejaculation, against the enemy, and, as her poverty grew and her chances decreased in inverse ratio, the enemy, like vultures flocking to the fatally wounded, seemed startlingly to increase in force. At first it was a well-dressed corps strayed from Broadway or the Avenue; then it was the bank-clerk hurrying to work and the master mechanic hurrying from it; but finally, so plain are the signs of distress shown upon our faces by the selves that are besieged, it had become the professionally employing, professedly unemployed. Yet at every dawn she renewed her quest, with a glass of blue milk and a bite of bread for breakfast. Every day and all day she tramped the long, aching streets. And every night, despairing but resolute, she came home for her supper of bread and milk and for the sleep of the hungry and distressed. It was now a Thursday morning. The milkman had pounded at her door and, receiving no answer, had left no milk. Still gnawing her crust, Katie slunk out of the tenement, and, at the step, was waylaid by the rent-collector, a little man with a sharp, white face that told plainly of his own struggle. He blocked the exit. "Good-day to you, Miss Flanagan," he said, touching his dirty cap. "Good-mornin', Mr. Woods," she answered, aware that the hour for the last engagement was approaching. The man was one whose business forced him to mince nothing. "I was comin' up to git yer rent," he continued. "It's three weeks overdue." "I'm afraid I'll have to be askin' you to let it run a bit longer," said Katie, and her voice, in spite of all resolution, trembled. "But I've been an' done that twice fer you, Miss Flanagan. The boss is after me as hard as I'm after you--an' harder." "I know it. I--you can't stand him off another week, Mr. Woods?" "Nix on the stand-off, miss." "You see, I'm--I'm out of a job." "I know that, but then you've been out o' one fer a good while now." "Yes, only I rather expect--indeed, I've been promised one beginnin' to-morrow." The little man coughed behind a dirty hand. "That's Friday?" he asked. "It is that." "Well, ain't you got your dates mixed? You told me last week you had a job promised for that Friday."