"I'll buy a Mrs. Rand with pleasure," I promised. "I have never ceased to regret that I did not save ours in the fire and let the pincushion Cousin Park Garnett gave me perish in the flames." "Well, that's one sale already! That means five cents. I get five cents on every sale I make." "I'll take a batty-cake turner just to see it do the flipflap, if it takes a whole trip of fares to pay for it." "Good for you, Dee! I'll ride in your jitney if my work takes me in the West End." CHAPTER II EARNING A LIVING We were up bright and early the next morning. I was dressed and tenderly cared for, with my easy chair dragged into the bay window, where I could command a view of the street east and west as far as the eye could reach. A housemaid, whose duty it was in the morning to do up the Tuckers' apartment, was cautioned to look in on me every half-hour to see that I wanted for nothing. "Zebedee would kill us for leaving you this way," declared Dum as she embraced me good-by. "Nothing but the exigencies of the case excuse us." "'My poverty and not my will consents,'" quoted Dee. "We'll be in for lunch. We've got to eat, and it might just as well be here." The maid was instructed to bring a generous supply of lunch up to the apartment at one o'clock. "If we have it up here I won't have to wash my face. I have worked so hard to make the dirt on it look casual that I can't contemplate going all over it again." Of course my meals had to be brought up to me from the café because of my old ankle, and the girls often had theirs brought up, too, although they preferred going down as a rule. They insisted they missed too many tricks by having them sent up. "No second and third helps to pie, and the one help you get too dainty for us." "Look out the window for me every ten minutes or so and pray that Henry won't get cranky and have to be cranked and have me expose my skirts to the rude gaze of the public," begged Dee as she hugged me good-by. She had to forego the kiss as she was afraid of rubbing off her dirty make-up, and I was quite willing to have it thus. Brindle, her beloved bulldog, was not so squeamish as I, however, and gave her an affectionate and disastrous lick. "Brindle can keep you company, honey. Good-by, darling," to the dog. "I'm going to take you down to your household necessity, Dum, and I am going to do it for nothing, too. I am loaded to the guards with gas. I reckon I won't put out my sign until I get downtown. I'll start my trade from down there." Dum had lettered the jitney sign for her the evening before. It was most artistic, done in large blue letters on white cardboard: ------------------ | MONUMENT AVENUE | | | | 5c JITNEY 5c | ------------------