The Little River news., 1919-12-24
Copyright by the Adam By EARL DERR BIGGERS.


 His salary provides against that.
 Peters chop house was, not so long ago, a prescribed course for freshmen on certain New York paper. More forcefully, it was a part of the inquisi- tion that tortured the soul of the ap- prentice. The new man went there instinctively, sat on a perilous stool, and while his coffee cooled invented socialistic epigrams about the men of fatter pay envelopes who ate in the neighborhood of the white lights.
 To find Peters you stunned any thing resembling white light. The nsth you chose led down murky streets lined with packing cases and filtered with the excelsior of commerce. Your nostrils were assailed by the odor of dead things; before your eyes Chinese laundry signs danced their crimson dance. Up the darkest alley of the lot you came upon Peters, it's window un- washed, half the white enamel letters missing from the legend that pro- claimed 1t.
 Inside the window a single gas lamp with broken mantle shed reluctant light upon the antique pastry and his toric rolls that Peter would have termed his display" Peter himself was in a cage near the door, mild of manner for one behind bars, yellow of hair, greasy, the deluded victim of an idea that through fancy waistcoats one may attain the picturesque. re- gardless of the waistcoat's cleanliness.
 Passing Peter, you took stool near Q harrow counter, and raised your eyes to The dirty walls where hung the fly specked suggestions" for a meal. Fricassee of lamb with peas was only fifteen cents, and there was also a Spanish omelette, equally inexpensive, which, if you ordered it, recalled grate- fully to your mind the thrashing of '98 When you had made your selec- tion and lowered your eyes, you gazed straight into Milly's, just as she set the glass of water down before you
 Milly was not beautiful. The sud den sight of her as you gave your or der induced no tremor of the voice Far from 1t. Her hair was of an un classified color straight, scanty, de- void of the deceit of rat or puff. Her eyes were green, or blue, or gray, what ever you wished to call them; but whatever you called them, they were watery Her complexion was sallow; her figure lean. And yet
 When novelists exhaust their adjec- tives in describing heroine they re- mark that she had that indefnable something about her" and let 1t go at that Milly was an incomplete heroine She had that indefinable something, and nothing else Drawn by popular artist for the cover of best seller Milly would have killed the book, and yet she haL L that indefinable something as surely as have the fair ladies of 6ctional fame.
 Just what was the real name of that "something" in Milly's case is hard to gay. Thinking it over at this distance, 1t must have been simply that Milly, far above the more happily doaered of her sex, knew how to understand and to sympathize. Through these twin talents she climbed to distinction in the hearts of the hopeless cubs.
 Hopeless is the word. To Milly's counter for their battered steaks came . small army of boys who were at the moment the sick.hearted recipients of small pay and vast experiences com binatiOn apt to result in sore reflection. Not few among them were destined to go far in the profession, but for the time being they were all playing the role of the under dog. They knew 1t. They referred to it bitterly as they waited for their coffee to cool. And Milly, listening, understood and spoke words of cheer.
 It was a night late in June when Milly glanced up from the bread she was slicing to see Randolph Spade enter Peters chop house, Now, it was no small privilege-and the young mans manner intimated that he was aware of the fact-for a girl to be allowed to look upon Randolph Spade. He was arrayed faultlessly. and the band about his straw hat was proof of membership in an exclusive college club. Removing the hat a proceeding novel to Peter's-he revealed hair brushed back straight from the fore head in the manner affected by stage juveniles and undergraduates. The forehead was high. the eyes by turn keen and visionary behind the glasses. Milly had him neatly classified before he took his seat; she knew his kind, and she knew that the path that stretched for them from Peters to the eating places of the white lights was beset by difficulties of which the coars- or travellers never dreamed. She smiled to herself as she took his order.
 When she had confided it to a greasy kitchen face that glared at her through the window at her back, she moved along the counter to where Jimmy Clark sat, clear-eyed, above his pie.
 Know him?" she asked, nodding toward the newcomer.
 Clark's bloodshot eyes turned in the direction indicated. He was shabby