A view of him in broad daylight convinced Josie that he really was the beggar who had the desirable stand at the front entrance to Burnett & Burnett’s and also the realization came to her that she had seen the man before and that it was not as a mendicant.
For the second time since Josie came to Wakely she puzzled her brains over where before she had seen or known a man, this time an old one. She was still in doubt as to the identity of the young man who evidently lived in the apartment next to the Leslies, and now a palsied old beggar was adding to her perplexity.
“I’ll keep an eye on him during the morning and perhaps I’ll remember,” she promised herself.
It was a busy morning but between sales Josie managed to get an occasional glimpse of the one-eyed beggar at the gate. He, too, was doing a thriving business. Josie wondered if the woman at the rear entrance was playing in such good luck as her rival in the front. Once during the morning she had occasion to pass by the back door and could look out at the female newsie. Straggling iron gray hair was blown by the wintry breezes across a round, plump face which Nature had doubtless intended to be wreathed in perpetual smiles and which seemed with difficulty to assume an expression of misery and woe. Her comfortable, well rounded body was arrayed in pitiful rags. Josie determined to study her more closely and accordingly when the store closed she made her exit by the rear door.
“Pa-a-perrr! Pa-a-perr!” quavered the woman in a tone that spoke of utter misery and dejection.
A genial gentleman stopped to buy one.
“Is it the last edition?” he asked.
“Ye-e-ss sirr!” she whined, “the very latest.”
He handed her a quarter of a dollar.
“I haven’t an-y ch-aa-nge, sirr.”