"I think a taste for martyrdom is just as difficult to eradicate from the system as a taste for blood," Helen remarked whimsically. "Very well, run on and I'll 'receive' in your absence. I could say with Antony, 'Lend me your ears,' for I shall need them. Have you any commands?" "Just a few. Please tell Paulina Strozynski's big brother that he _must_ call for her earlier, and not leave her sitting on the steps so long. Tell Mrs. Hickok that if she sends us another child whom she knows to be down with the chicken-pox, we won't take in her two youngest when they're old enough. Don't give Mrs. Slamberg any aprons. She returned the little undershirts and drawers that I sent her by Julie, and said 'if it was all the same to me, she'd rather have something that would make a little more show!' And--oh yes, do see if you can find Jacob Shubener's hat; he is crying down in the yard, and doesn't dare go home without it." "Very well. Four cases. Strozynski--steps--cruelty. Hickok--chicken-pox--ingratitude. Slamberg--aprons--vanity. Shubener--hat--carelessness. Oh that I could fasten Jacob's hat to his ear by a steel chain! Has he looked in the sink?" "Yes." "Ash-barrel?" "Certainly." "Up in the pepper-tree?" "Of course." "Then some one has 'chucked' it into the next yard, and the janitor will have to climb the fence,--at his age! Oh, if I could eliminate the irregular verb 'to chuck' from the vocabulary of this school, I could 'make out of the broken sounds of life a song, and out of life itself a melody,'" and she flew down-stairs like a breeze, to find the patient Mr. Bowker. Mr. Bowker was a nice little man, who had not all his wits about him, but whose heart was quite intact, and who swept with energy and washed windows with assiduity. He belonged to the Salvation Army, and the most striking articles of his attire, when sweeping, were a flame-colored flannel shirt and a shiny black hat with "Prepare to Meet Thy God" on the front in large silver letters. The combination of color was indescribably pictorial, and as lurid and suggestive as an old-fashioned Orthodox sermon. As I went through the lower hall, I found Mr. Bowker assisting Helen to search the coal-bin. "Don't smile," she cried. "Punch says, 'Sometimes the least likeliest place is more likelier than the most likeliest,'--and sure enough, here is the hat! I should have been named Deborah or Miriam,--not Helen!" and she hurried to dry the tears of the weeping Jacob. [Illustration: "HERE IS THE HAT!"] CHAPTER V. I SEEK PATSY, AND MEET THE DUCHESS OF ANNA STREET. "'Tis pride, rank pride and haughtiness of soul." I make my way through the streets, drinking in the glorious air, breathing the perfume of the countless fruit stands and the fragrances that floated out from the open doors of the little flower stores in every block, till I left all that was pleasant behind me and turned into Anna Street.