This morning's quotations list the price of rib beef at six cents per
(butcher's) pound. But on the day that Hetty was "released" by the B.
S. the price was seven and one-half cents. That fact is what makes
this story possible. Otherwise, the extra four cents would have--

But the plot of nearly all the good stories in the world is concerned
with shorts who were unable to cover; so you can find no fault with
this one.

Hetty mounted with her rib beef to her $3.50 third-floor back. One
hot, savory beef-stew for supper, a night's good sleep, and she would
be fit in the morning to apply again for the tasks of Hercules, Joan
of Arc, Una, Job, and Little-Red-Riding-Hood.

In her room she got the granite-ware stew-pan out of the 2x4-foot
china--er--I mean earthenware closet, and began to dig down in a
rat's-nest of paper bags for the potatoes and onions. She came out
with her nose and chin just a little sharper pointed.

There was neither a potato nor an onion. Now, what kind of a beef-stew
can you make out of simply beef? You can make oyster-soup without
oysters, turtle-soup without turtles, coffee-cake without coffee, but
you can't make beef-stew without potatoes and onions.

But rib beef alone, in an emergency, can make an ordinary pine door
look like a wrought-iron gambling-house portal to the wolf. With salt
and pepper and a tablespoonful of flour (first well stirred in a
little cold water) 'twill serve--'tis not so deep as a lobster à la
Newburg nor so wide as a church festival doughnut; but 'twill serve.