Pete took note of Maggie.

"Say, Mag, I'm stuck on yer shape. It's outa sight," he said,parenthetically, with an affable grin.

As he became aware that she was listening closely, he grewstill more eloquent in his descriptions of various happenings inhis career. It appeared that he was invincible in fights.

"Why," he said, referring to a man with whom he had had amisunderstanding, "dat mug scrapped like a damn dago. Dat's right. He was dead easy. See? He tau't he was a scrapper. But he foun'out diff'ent! Hully gee."

He walked to and fro in the small room, which seemed then togrow even smaller and unfit to hold his dignity, the attribute ofa supreme warrior. That swing of the shoulders that had frozen thetimid when he was but a lad had increased with his growth andeducation at the ratio of ten to one. It, combined with the sneerupon his mouth, told mankind that there was nothing in space whichcould appall him. Maggie marvelled at him and surrounded him withgreatness. She vaguely tried to calculate the altitude of thepinnacle from which he must have looked down upon her.

"I met a chump deh odder day way up in deh city," he said. "Iwas goin' teh see a frien' of mine. When I was a-crossin' dehstreet deh chump runned plump inteh me, an' den he turns aroun' an'says, 'Yer insolen' ruffin,' he says, like dat. 'Oh, gee,' I says,'oh, gee, go teh hell and git off deh eart',' I says, like dat. See? 'Go teh hell an' git off deh eart',' like dat. Den dehblokie he got wild. He says I was a contempt'ble scoun'el,er somet'ing like dat, an' he says I was doom' teh everlastin'pe'dition an' all like dat. 'Gee,' I says, 'gee! Deh hell I am,'I says. 'Deh hell I am,' like dat. An' den I slugged 'im. See?"

With Jimmie in his company, Pete departed in a sort of a blazeof glory from the Johnson home. Maggie, leaning from the window,watched him as he walked down the street.

Here was a formidable man who disdained the strength of aworld full of fists. Here was one who had contempt for brass-clothed power; one whose knuckles could defiantly ring against thegranite of law. He was a knight.

The two men went from under the glimmering street-lamp andpassed into shadows.

Turning, Maggie contemplated the dark, dust-stained walls, andthe scant and crude furniture of her home. A clock, in asplintered and battered oblong box of varnished wood, she suddenlyregarded as an abomination. She noted that it ticked raspingly. The almost vanished flowers in the carpet-pattern, she conceived tobe newly hideous. Some faint attempts she had made with blueribbon, to freshen the appearance of a dingy curtain, she now sawto be piteous.

She wondered what Pete dined on.

She reflected upon the collar and cuff factory. It began toappear to her mind as a dreary place of endless grinding. Pete'selegant occupation brought him, no doubt, into contact with peoplewho had money and manners. it was probable that he had a largeacquaintance of pretty girls. He must have great sums of money tospend.

To her the earth was composed of hardships and insults. Shefelt instant admiration for a man who openly defied it. Shethought that if the grim angel of death should clutch his heart,Pete would shrug his shoulders and say: "Oh, ev'ryt'ing goes."

She anticipated that he would come again shortly. She spentsome of her week's pay in the purchase of flowered cretonne for alambrequin. She made it with infinite care and hung it to theslightly-careening mantel, over the stove, in the kitchen. Shestudied it with painful anxiety from different points in the room. She wanted it to look well on Sunday night when, perhaps, Jimmie'sfriend would come. On Sunday night, however, Pete did not appear.

Afterward the girl looked at it with a sense of humiliation. She was now convinced that Pete was superior to admiration forlambrequins.

A few evenings later Pete entered with fascinating innovationsin his apparel. As she had seen him twice and he had differentsuits on each time, Maggie had a dim impression that hiswardrobe was prodigiously extensive.

"Say, Mag," he said, "put on yer bes' duds Friday night an'I'll take yehs teh deh show. See?"

He spent a few moments in flourishing his clothes and thenvanished, without having glanced at the lambrequin.

Over the eternal collars and cuffs in the factory Maggie spentthe most of three days in making imaginary sketches of Pete and hisdaily environment. She imagined some half dozen women in love withhim and thought he must lean dangerously toward an indefinite one,whom she pictured with great charms of person, but with analtogether contemptible disposition.

She thought he must live in a blare of pleasure. He had friends,and people who were afraid of him.

She saw the golden glitter of the place where Pete was to takeher. An entertainment of many hues and many melodies where she wasafraid she might appear small and mouse-colored.

Her mother drank whiskey all Friday morning. With lurid faceand tossing hair she cursed and destroyed furniture all Fridayafternoon. When Maggie came home at half-past six her mother layasleep amidst the wreck of chairs and a table. Fragments ofvarious household utensils were scattered about the floor.She had vented some phase of drunken fury upon the lambrequin.It lay in a bedraggled heap in the corner.

"Hah," she snorted, sitting up suddenly, "where deh hell yehbeen? Why deh hell don' yeh come home earlier? Been loafin''round deh streets. Yer gettin' teh be a reg'lar devil."

When Pete arrived Maggie, in a worn black dress, was waitingfor him in the midst of a floor strewn with wreckage. The curtainat the window had been pulled by a heavy hand and hung by one tack,dangling to and fro in the draft through the cracks at the sash. The knots of blue ribbons appeared like violated flowers. The firein the stove had gone out. The displaced lids and open doorsshowed heaps of sullen grey ashes. The remnants of a meal,ghastly, like dead flesh, lay in a corner. Maggie's red mother,stretched on the floor, blasphemed and gave her daughter a bad name.