"He just gasps and goes back to tell it all to Mr. Burnham, and that individual comes out and dickers with her right then and there for the purchase of her crown of glory.
"She got sixteen dollars an ounce—a big, fat bank roll. She reinvests some of it for enough false hair to make her look all right and then she goes over to one of the big stores and buys the kind of clothes that nobody knows how to wear like her.
"It's the most stunning little beauty in the world that comes home that night. With her clothes and her beauty she don't have no trouble at all to make an engagement. Those two maiden aunts are living in a little bungalow that she's built for them out in a suburb of Chicago today; and me—I'm on the job right here just as you see me.
"Uncle Dave? He turned up—not so many days ago. And he has the pneumogastric to try to chuckle her under the chin just like he used to in Springfield. And she don't say a word.
"She just turns white as a bit of powdered chalk. I catches her as she keels over. I holds her with one hand. With the other I sticks a hatpin into Uncle Dave where it will do the most good."
[CHAPTER IV.]
The Tragedy of the Immigrant Girl.
In the musty old records of United States District Attorney Edwin W. Sims, in the federal building, is written the story of the tragedy of a little Italian peasant girl.