the city."

"Ah, don't do a mean trick like that to the old town!" besought the
sardonic Mayme. "Where do you come in to get hurt?"

He burst into the hectic grievances of the pampered and spoiled child.
His family was just getting a foothold in Society (with an almost holy
emphasis on the word) and now they were disgraced. All was up. Their
new, precariously held acquaintances would drop them. In his petulant
grief he did an amazing thing; he produced a bunch of clippings from the
local society columns, setting forth, in the printed company of the
Shining Ones, the doings (mostly charitable) of Mrs. Samuel Berthelin,
her daughter, Mrs. Harris, and her son, David, referred to glowingly as
"the scion of the wealth and position of the late lamented financier."

Mayme was impressed. Like most shop-girls she was a fervent reader of
society news. (If shop-girls did not read this fine flower of American
democracy, nobody would, except those who wait eagerly and anxiously for
their names to appear.) She perceived--not knowing that the advertising
leverage of the Berthelin Loan Agency had forced those insecure portals
of print for the entry of Mrs. Berthelin and her progeny--that she was
in the presence of the Great. Capacity for awe was not in Mayme's
independent soul. But she was interested and sympathetic. Here was a
career worth saving!

"Let's go over to the station-house," said she. "I know some of the
cops."

To the white building with the green lanterns they went. The shoplifting
case, it appeared, had already been bailed out. Furthermore, everything