duds; just hiked off to soak 'em and pay the lawyer. I might have
been as old and ugly and rich as the yellow-skinned woman
opposite me, who was turning over laces on the middle counter,
for all these things meant to me--with Tom in jail.

I was thinking this as I looked at her, when all at once I saw--

You know it takes a pretty quick touch, sharp eyes and good nerve
to get away with the goods in a big shop like that. Or it takes
something altogether different. It was the different way she did
it. She took up the piece of lace--it was a big collar, fine like
a cobweb picture in threads,--you can guess what it must have
been worth if that old sinner, Mother Douty, gave me fifteen
dollars for it. She took it up in a quick, eager way, as though
she'd found just what she wanted. Then she took out a lace sample
from her gold-linked purse and held them both up close to her
blinky little eyes, looking at it through a gold lorgnette with
emeralds in the handle; pulling it and feeling it with the air of
one who knows a fine thing when she sees it, and just what makes
it fine. Then she rustled off to the door to examine it closely
in the light, and--Mag Monahan, she walked right out with it!

At least, she'd got beyond the inner doors when I tapped her on
the shoulder.

"I beg pardon, madam." My best style, Mag.

She pulled herself up haughtily and blinked at me. She was a
little, thin mummy of a woman, just wrapped away in silks and
velvets, but on the inside of that nervous, little old body of