“I've lost my pay envelope!”
Wan little Louisa! She had been talking to Topsy, Fannie's helper. Her envelope had slipped out of her waist, and when she went to pick it up, lo! there was nothing there to pick—fourteen dollars gone! There was excitement for you. Fourteen dollars in Wing 13, Room 3, was equal to fourteen million dollars in Wall Street. Everybody pulled out boxes and searched, got down on hands and knees and poked, and the rest mauled Louisa from head to foot.
“Sure it ain't in your stocking? Well, look again.”
“What's this?”—jabbing Louisa's ribs—“this?”
Eight hands going over Louisa's person as if the anguished slip of a girl could not have felt that stiff envelope with fourteen dollars in it herself had it been there. She stood helpless, woebegone.
Ida rose Napoleon-like to the rescue. “I'll search everybody in the room!”
Whereat she made a grab at Topsy and removed her. “They” say Topsy was stripped to the breezes in Ida's fury, but no envelope.
Topsy, be it known, was already a suspicious character. That very week Fannie's purse had disappeared under circumstances pointing to Topsy. Which caused a strained relationship between the two. One day it broke—such relationship as existed.
Fannie up at her end of the boxes was heard to screech down the line to where Topsy was sorting chocolate rolls:
“How dare you talk to me like that?”