It was about a week later. Miss Bailey and her monitors were putting Room 18 to rights after the stress and storm of the day. Gold-fish, window-boxes, canaries, and pencil points were all being ministered to by their respective supervisors, and the door opened and Gertie Armusheffsky appeared. Such a distracted, tear-stained, white-lipped Gertie that Miss Bailey swept her monitors into their weird wrappings and dismissed them with all speed.
"I can't go home," cried Gertie in desperation. "Honest, Miss Bailey, he'd kill me if I did."
And after listening to the girl's story, Miss Bailey congratulated herself that she had no other charges old enough to be caught in trouble as difficult.
Old Mr. Armusheffsky had read of a fire in a Brooklyn glove factory: hundreds of pairs of damaged gloves were spoken of. Now Mr. Armusheffsky kept his store very dark, and only the most fatal damages could be detected in its dim light. Catastrophes such as this of the glove factory were his opportunities. He always--he never left the store--sent Gertie to negotiate with the bereaved manufacturers, the insurance agents, or whoever chanced to be in authority over the débris. Upon this day there chanced to be no débris: the fire and the firemen had done their work. There was no one even to interview. And Gertie, somewhat apprehensive as to her grandfather's displeasure and disappointment, set out for home. She enlivened her homeward way by a visit to a big department store, where she envied the be-pompadoured damsels behind the counters; plunged into the squirming crowd around a bargain table and secured a jabot of real German Mechlin lace for thirteen cents. After this transaction she had in her purse the twelve cents left of her quarter dollar, and the jabot, the check showing its cost and the date, an unused trolley transfer, and the five dollars deposit which she was to have paid on the purchase of gloves. The purse was of the hand-bag variety, showy yet strong. It had been given to her as a reward and an encouragement by Miss Bailey.
"An' when I got off the car at the 'loop'," she ended, "an' changed into the Second Avenue cable, somebody in the crowd swiped me bag. I didn't have even a transfer left, an' I had to walk here. I was pushing along in the crowd lookin' at the signs 'Beware of pickpockets', an' thinkin' it was good I had no pockets to pick, when it come over me that my bag was gone. Just that easy! Me what ought to have known better. Say, you know it would be just as good as suicide to go an' give that 'pipe' to Grandpa. So I was thinking maybe you'd go round and sort of break the news. He's got a lot of respect for you. An' honest, I ain't kiddin'. He'd kill me for that five dollars." Then with sudden fury she ended, "I'd kill _him_ for five cents."