The Washington herald., 1915-08-15
O. HENRY'S MASTERPIECES 5:z The Th

~-No VI
the wraps and headgear of modiste; the other is
lugubrious with the sophistcal promises and grisy
display of painless dentist You may have room
there for two dollars week or you may have one
for twenty dollars. Among the Vallambrosa's
roomers stenographers musicians brokers,
shop-girls, spaee-rate writers. art students wire
tappers, and other people who lean far over the
banister-rail when the door-bel rings.
This treatise shall have to do with but two of
the Vallambrosians-thougk meaning no disrespect
to the others.
At six o'clock one afternoon Hetty Pepper came
back to her third-hoor rear $3.50 room in the VAL
lambrosa with her nose and chin more sharply
pointed than usual. To be discharged from the de-
partment store where you have been working four
years, and with only fifteen cents in your purse,
does have tendency to make your features ap-
pear more finely chseled.
And now for Hetty's thumb-na biography
while she climbs the two flights of stairs.
She walked into the Biggest Store morn
ing four years before with seventy-hve other girls
applying for a job behind the waist department
counter. The phalanx of wage-earners formed
bewilderng of beauty, carrying total
of blond hair sufficient to have justified the horse
back gaops of hundred Lady Godivas.
The capable, coo-eyed, impersonal, young, bald
headed man whose task it was to engage six of the
contestants, of feeling of sufocation
if he drowning in a of frangipanni,
while white clouds, hand-embroidered foated about
him. And then sail hove in sight. Hety Pepper,
horely of countenance with small, contemptuous,
green eyes and chocolate-colored hair, dressed in
a suit of plain burlap and a common-sense hat,
stood before him with every of her twenty nine
years Of life unmstakably in sight.
you're on" shouted the bald-headed young
man, and was saved. And that is how Hetty came
to be employed in the Biggest Store. The story of
her rise to eight-dollar-a-week salary is the
combined stories of Hercules Joan of Arc, Una,
Job and Little Red Riding Hood. You shall not
learn from the salary that paid her
beginner. There is sentiment growing about such
things, and want no millionaire store-proprietors
climbing the fre-escape of my tenement-house
throw dynamite bombs into my skylight boudoir.
The story of Hetty's discharge from the Biggest
Store is nearly repetition OF her engagement
to be monotonous.
In each department of the store there is
omniscient, onlnipreseht, and on1nivorous person
carrying always mileage book and a red necktie
and referred to as buyer" The destinies OF the
girls in his department who live (see Bureau of
Victual Statistics)-so much per week are in his
hands
This particular buyer a capable, coo-eyed.
inpersonal, young. bald-headed AS he walk
ed along the aisles OF his department he seemed to
be sailing sea OF frangpann, while white
clouds. machine embroidered, ioated around him.
Too many sweets bring surfet. He looked upon
Hetty Peppers honely countenance, emerald eyes,
and chocolate-colored hair as welcome oasis of
green in a desert OF cloying beauty. In quiet
angle of counter he pinched her kindly.
three inches above the elbow. She slapped him
three feet away with good blow OF her
cular and not especially lily-white right. So, now
you know why Hetty Pepper came to leave the Big
gest Store at thirty minutes notice. with one dime
and nickel in her purse.
This mornings quotations list the price of rib
beef at six cents per (butchers) 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 unable
to cover; you can hnd no fault with this
Hetty mounted with her rib beef to her $3.50
third floor back One hot savory beef-stew for sup
per, nights good sleep, and she would be fit in
the morning to apply again for tine tasks of Her
cues. Joan of Arc, Una. and Little Red Riding
Hood.
In her room she got the granite-ware stew-pan
out of the 7x4-foot china-er-I mean earthenware
closet, and began to dig down in a rats'-nest of
paper bags for the potatoes and onions. She came
out with her nose and chin just little sharper
pointed
There was neither potato nor an onion Now,
what kind of beef-stew you mike out of
simply beef? You can make oyster-soup without
oysters, turtle-soup without turtles eofee-cake