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By Root 5047 0

two and then a police dog, woofing and belling like a hound from hell. She walked half a block, trailed by four dogs, and then all but the collie went back to their occupations. The collie was still a little behind, snarling at her heels. She hoped, she prayed, that someone would open a door and call him home. She turned to speak to him. “Go home, doggie,” she said. “Go home, good doggie, go home, nice doggie.” Then he sprang at her coat sleeve and she struck at him with her brief case. Her heart was beating so that she thought she would die. The collie sank his teeth into the old leather of the brief case and began a tug of war. “Leave that poor lady alone, you nasty cur,” Helen heard someone say. A stranger appeared at her right with a kettle of water and let the dog have it. The dog went howling up the street. “Now you come into the house for a few minutes,” the stranger said. “You come in and tell me what you’re selling and rest your feet.”

Helen thanked the stranger and followed her into one of the little houses. Her savior was a short woman with eyes of a fine, pale blue and a very red face. She introduced herself as Mrs. Brown and in order to receive Helen she took off an apron and hung it over the back of a chair. She was a little woman with an extravagantly curved figure. Her breasts and buttocks stretched the cloth of her house dress. “Now tell me what it is that you’re selling,” she said, “and I’ll see if I want any.”

“I’m an accredited representative for Dr. Bartholomew’s Institute for Self-Improvement,” Helen said. “There are still a few subscriptions open for eligible men and women. Dr. Bartholomew feels that a college education is not a requirement. He feels …”

“Well, that’s good,” Mrs. Brown said, “because I’m not what you would call an educated woman. I graduated from the Nangasakit High School, which is one of the best high schools in the world—known all over the world—but the amount of education I got through learning is nothing to the amount of education that runs in my blood. I’m directly descended from Madame de Staël and many other well-educated and distinguished men and women. I suppose you don’t believe me, I suppose you think I’m crazy, but if you’ll notice that picture on the wall—it’s a picture post card of Madame de Staël—and then notice my own profile you’ll see the resemblance, no doubt.”

“There are many four-colored portraits of famous historical men and women,” Helen said.

“I’ll stand right up beside the portrait so’s you’ll be sure to see the resemblance,” Mrs. Brown said, and she went across the room and stood beside the card. “I guess you must have seen the resemblance by now. You see the resemblance, don’t you? You must see it. Everybody else does. A man came by here yesterday selling hot-water heaters and told me I looked enough like Madame de Staël to be her twin. Said we looked like identical twins.” She smoothed her house dress and then went back and sat on the edge of her chair. “It’s being directly descended from Madame de Staël and other distinguished men and women,” she said, “that accounts for the education in my blood. I have very expensive tastes. If I go into a store to buy a pocketbook and there’s a pocketbook for one dollar and a pocketbook for three dollars my eye goes straight to the one that costs three dollars. I’ve preferred expensive things all my life. Oh, I had great expectations! My great-grandfather was an ice merchant. He made a fortune selling ice to the niggers in Honduras. He wasn’t a man to put much stock in banks and he took all his money to California and put it into gold bullion and coming back his ship sank in a storm off Cape Hatteras, gold and all. Of course it’s still there—two and a half million dollars of it— and it’s all mine, but do you think the banks around here would loan me the money to have it raised? Not on your life. There’s over two and one half million dollars of my very own lying there in the sea and there’s not a man or woman in this part of the country with enough gumption or sense of honor to loan me the money to raise my own inheritance.