The week raced with her funds. On the sixth day she paid out her last fifty cents for room-rent, and, without breakfast, filched her lunch from a half-eaten order of codfish balls returned to the kitchen.
Yes, reader; but who are you to turn away sickened and know no more of this? You who love to bask in life's smile, but shudder at its drool! A Carpenter did not sicken at a leper. He held out a hand.
That night, upon leaving, she asked for a small advance on her week's wage, retreating before the furiously stained apron-front and the one eye of the proprietor cast down upon her.
"Lay off! Lay off! Who done your bankin' last year? To-morrow's your day, less four bits for breakage. Speakin' o' breakage, if you drop your jacket, it'll bust. Watch out! That pint won't last you overnight. Layoff!"
She reddened immediately, clapping her hand over the small protruding bottle in her pocket. She dared not return to her room, but sat out the night in a dark foyer behind a half-closed storm-door. No one found her out, and the wind could not reach her. Toward morning she even slept sitting. But the day following, weak and too soft for the lift, straining to remove the great dish-pan high with crockery from sink to table, she let slip, grasping for a new hold.
There was a crash and a splintered debris—plates that rolled like hoops to the four corners of the room, shivering as they landed; a great ringing explosion of heavy stoneware, and herself drenched with the webby water.
"O God!" she cried in immediate hysteria. "O God! O God!" and fell to her knees in a frenzy of clearing-up.
A raw-boned Minerva, a waitress with whom she had had no previous word, sprang to her succor, a big, red hand of mercy jerking her up from the debris.
"Clear out! He's across the bar. Beat it while the going's good. Your week's gone in breakage, anyways, and he'll split up the place when he comes. Clear out, girl, and here—for car fare."
Out in the street, her jacket not quite on and her hat clapped askew, Ann
'Lisbeth found herself quite suddenly scuttling down a side-street.