When the daylight whitened the black air it found Dyckman sprawled along his window-lounge and woke him to the disgust of another morning. He had to reach up and draw a curtain between his eyes and the hateful sun.

But Kedzie had only her vigilant arm. It slipped down across her brow like a watchful nurse coming in on tiptoe to protect a fretful patient from broken sleep.

Kedzie slept on and on, till at length the section of Crotona Park immediately beneath her refused to adapt itself longer to her squirming search for soft spots. She sat up in startled confusion at the unfamiliar ceiling. The wall-paper was not at all what she always woke to. At first she guessed that she must have fallen out of bed with a vengeance. Then she decided she had fallen out of doors and windows as well, and into the front yard.

No, these bushes were not those bushes. That beech almost overhead, seen from below by sleep-thick eyes, was an amazing thing.

She had drowsy childhood memories of being carried up-stairs by her father and put to bed by her mother. Once or twice she had wakened with her head to the footboard and endured agonies of confusion before she got the universe turned round right. But how had she got outdoors? Her father had never carried her down-stairs and left her in the yard before.

At last she saw that she had fallen not merely out of bed and out of doors, but out of town. She remembered her wanderings and her lying down to sleep. She wondered who had taken her hat off for her.

She looked about for somebody to ask questions of. There was nobody to be seen. There were a few housetops peering over the horizon at her.

English sparrows were jumping here and there, engaged in their everlasting spats, but she could not ask them.

Kedzie sat up straight, her arms back of her, her feet erect on their heels at a distance, like suspicious squirrels. She yawned against the back of her wrist and began to remember her escapade. She gurgled with laughter, but she felt rumpled and lame, and not in the least like Miss Anita Adair. She almost wished she were at home, gazing from her bed to the washstand and hearing her mother puttering about in the kitchen making breakfast; to Kedzie's young heart it was the superlative human luxury to know you ought to get up and not get up.

She clambered to her feet and made what toilet she could while her seclusion lasted. She shook out her skirts like feathers, and shoved her disheveled hair up under her hat as she had always swept the dust under the rug.

She was overjoyed to find that her hand-bag had not been stolen. The powder-puff would serve temporarily for a wash-basin. The small change in her purse would postpone starvation or surrender for a while.

She walked out of her sleeping-porch to the path. A few people were visible now—workmen and workwomen taking a short-cut, and leisurely gentlemen out of a job already beginning their day's work of holding down benches. No one asked any questions or showed any interest in Kedzie.

She found a street-car line, made sure that the car she took was bound down-town, and resumed her effort to recapture New York.

Nearly everybody was reading one morning paper or another, but Kedzie was not interested in the news. One man kept brushing her nose with his paper. She was angry at his absence of mind, but she did not notice that her nose was being annoyed by her own name in the head-lines.

She rode and rode and rode till her hunger distracted her. She passed restaurant after restaurant, till at last she could stand the famine no longer. She got down from the car and walked till she came to a bakery lunch-room entitled, “The Bon-Ton Bakery by Joe Gidden.” It was another like the one she ate in the day before. The same kind of waiter was there, a dish-thrower with the manners of a hostler.

But Kedzie was so meek after her night on the ground that she was flattered by his grin. “Skip” Magruder was his title, as she learned in time. The “Skip” came to him from a curious impediment in his gait that caused him to drop a stitch now and then.

Not long afterward Kedzie was so far beyond this poor hamstrung stable-soul that she could not hear the word skip without blushing as if it were an indecency. It was an indecency, too, that such a little Aphrodite should be reduced to a love-affair with such a dismal Vulcan. But if it could happen on Olympus, it could happen on earth.

Proximity is said to breed love, but priority has its virtues no less. Skip Magruder was the first New-Yorker to help Kedzie in her hour of dismay, and she thought him a great and powerful being profoundly informed about the city of her dreams.

Skip did know a thing or two—possibly three. He was a New-Yorker of a sort, and he had his New York as well as Jim Dyckman had his or Peter Cheever his. He sized Kedzie up for the ignoramus she was, but he was good to her in so far as his skippy faculties permitted. He dropped the paper he was reading when she wandered in, and won her at once by not calling her “Cutie.”

“W'at 'll y'ave, lady?” he said as he skirled a plate and a glass of ice-water along the oil-cloth with exquisite skill, slapped a knife and fork and spoon alongside, and flipped her a check to be punched as she ordered, and a fly-frequented bill of fare to order from.

Kedzie was stumped by the array of dishes. Skip volunteered his aid—suggested “A nor'nge, ham 'n'eggs, a plate o' wheats, anna cuppa corfee.”

“All right,” said Kedzie, wondering how much such a barbecue would cost.

Skip went to bellow the order through a sliding door and grab it when it should be pushed forth from a mysterious realm. Kedzie picked up a newspaper that Skip had picked up after some early client left it.

Kedzie glanced at the front page and saw that the Germans had taken three towns and the Allies one trench. She could not pronounce the towns, and trenches meant nothing in her life. She was about to toss the paper aside when a head-line caught her eye. She read with pardonable astonishment:

SPANKED GIRL GONE

Beautiful Kedzie Thropp, Western Society Belle, Deserts Her Wealthy Parents at Biltmore and Vanishes

POLICE OF NATION IN SEARCH

Kedzie felt the world blow up about her. Her name was in the New York papers the second morning of her first visit! Her father and mother were called wealthy! She was a society belle! Who could ever hereafter deny these ideal splendors, now that there had been a piece in the paper about them?

But dog on it! Why did they have to go and do such a thing as put in about her being spanked? She blushed all over with rage. She had once planned to go back home with wondrous gossip of her visit to the big city. She had seen herself gloating over the other girls who had never been to a big city.

Now they would all give her the laugh. The boys would make up rhymes and yell them at her from a safe distance. She could kill her father for being so mean to her. It was bad enough to hurt her as he did, but to go and tattle when her back was turned was simply awful. She could never go home now. She'd rather die.

Yet the paper said the police of the nation were searching for her. She understood how Eliza felt with the bloodhounds after her. She must keep out of sight of the police. One good thing was the picture of her that they printed in the paper. It was not her picture at all, and nothing like her. Besides, she had selected a new name. “Anita Adair” was a fine disguise. It sounded awful swell, too. It sounded like her folks had money. She was glad to be rid of “Kedzie Thropp.” She would never be Kedzie Thropp again.

Then the waiter came with her breakfast. It smelled so grand that she forgot to be afraid for a while. The coffee smoked aroma; the ham and eggs were fragrant; and the orange sent up a golden fume of delight.

Skip entered into conversation as she entered into the orange. “Where you woikin' now?” he said.

Kedzie did not know what his dialect meant at first. When she learned that “woikin'” was the same as “wurrkin”' she confessed that she had no job. She trembled lest he should recognize her from the paper. He eyed her narrowly and tried to flirt with her across the very head-lines that told who she was.

She could not be sure that he did not know her. He might be a detective in disguise looking for a reward.

Skip had been reading about Kedzie when she came in. But he never dreamed that she was she. He befriended her, however, out of the goodness of his heart and the desire to retain her in the neighborhood—also out of respect for the good old brass rule, “Do good unto others now, so that they will do good to you later.”

Slap told Kedzie that he knew a place right near where a goil was wanted. When he told her that it was a candy-store she was elated. A candy-store was her idea of a good place to work.

Skip told Kedzie where to go and what to say, and to mention that Skip sent her.

Skip also recommended lodgings next his own in the flat of Mr. and Mrs. Rietzvoller, delicatessen merchants.

“Nice rooms reasonable,” he said, “and I'll be near to look after you.”

“You're awful fresh, seems to me, on short acquaintance,” was Kedzie's stinging rebuke.

Skip laughed. “Didn't you see the special-delivery stamp on me forehead? But I guess you're a goil can take care yourself.”

Kedzie guessed she was. But she was in need of help. Where else could she turn? Whom else had she for a beau in this multitude of strangers? So she laughed encouragingly.

“All right. You're elected. Gimme the address.”

Skip wrote it on one of the business cards of the bakery. He added:

“Another thing: I know a good expressman will rustle your trunk over from—Where you boardin' at now?”

Kedzie flushed. She could hardly tell him that she had boarded in a park up-town somewhere.

Skip saw that she was confused. He showed exquisite tact.

“I'm wise, goilie. She's holdin' your trunk out on you. I been in the same boat m'self.”

Kedzie was willing to let it go at that, but Skip pondered:

“But, say—that ain't goin' to make such a hell of a hit—scuse me, lady—but I mean if you tell your new landlady about your trunk bein' left on your old one, that ain't goin' to get you nothin' but the door-slam in the snoot.... I tell you: tell her you just come in on the train and your wardrobe-trunk is on the way unless it got delayed in changin' cars at—oh, any old place. I guess you did come in, at that, from Buffalo or Pittsboig or some them Western joints, didn' you?”

Kedzie just looked at him. Her big eyes lied for her, and he hastened to say:

“Well, scuse me nosin' in on your own business. Tell the landlady what you want to, only tell her it was me sent you. That's as good as a guarantee—that she'll have to wait for her money.”

Kedzie laughed at his excruciating wit, but she was touched also by his courtesy, and she told him he was awful kind and she was terrible obliged.

That bowled him over. But when she rose with stateliness and, reaching for her money, offered to pay, he had the presence of mind to snarl, amiably:

“Ah, ferget it and beat it. This meal's on me, and wishing you many happy returns of the same.”

He certainly was one grand gentleman. The proprietor was away, and Skip could afford to be generous.

Kedzie left him and found the landlady and got a home; and then she found the store and got a job. For a time she was in Eden. The doleful proprietor's doleful wife was usually down-cellar making ice-cream while her husband was out in the kitchen cooking candy. Kedzie was free to guzzle soda-water at her will. Her forefinger and thumb went along the stacks of candy, dipping like a robin's beak. She was forever licking her fingers and brushing marshmallow dust off her chest. She usually had a large, square caramel outlined in one round cheek.

But the ecstasy did not abide. Kedzie began to realize why Mr. and Mrs. Fleissig were sad. Sweets were a sour business; the people who came into the shop were mainly children who spent whole half-hours choosing a cent's worth of burnt sugar, or young, foolish girls who giggled into the soda bubbles, or housewives ordering ice-cream for Sunday.

If a young man appeared it was always to buy a box of candy for some other girl. It made Kedzie cynical to see him haggle and ponder, trying to make the maximum hit with a minimum of ammunition. It made her more distrustful to see young men trying to flirt with her while they bought tributes of devotion to somebody else. But Kedzie also found out that several of the neighborhood girls accepted candy from several gentlemen simultaneously, and she drew many cynical conclusions from the candy business.

Skip Magruder was attentive and took her out to moving pictures when he was free. In return for the courtesy she took her meals at “The Bon-Ton Bakery by Joe Gidden.” Whenever he dared, Skip skipped the change. He could always slip her an extra titbit.

On that account she had to be a little extra gracious to him when he took her to the movies. Holding hands didn't hurt.

Not a week had gone before Skip had rivals. He caught Kedzie in deceptions. She kept him guessing, and the poor fool suffered the torments and thrills of jealousy. A flip young fellow named Hoke, agent for a jobber in ice-cream cones, and a tubby old codger named Kalteyer, who facetiously claimed to own a chewing-gum mine, were added competitors for Kedzie's smiles, while Skip teetered between homicide and suicide.

Skip was wretched, and Kedzie was enthralled by her own success. She had conquered New York. She had a job in a candy-store, a room in a flat with the family of a delicatessen merchant; she had as many flirtations as she could carry, and an increasing waiting-list. What more could woman ask?

And all this was in far upper Third Avenue. She had not yet been down to First Street. In fact, she was in New York two weeks before she got as far south as 100th Street. She had almost forgotten that she had ever dwelt elsewhere than in New York. Her imitative instinct was already exchanging her Western burr for a New York purr.

Her father and mother would hardly have known her voice if they had heard it. And they would hardly meet her, since they had given her up and gone back home, far sadder, no wiser, much poorer. They did not capture the insurance money, and they had no rewards to offer for Kedzie.

Now and then a Kedzie would be reported in some part of the country, and a wild paragraph would be printed about her. Now and then she would be found dead in a river or would be traced as a white slave drugged and sold and shipped to the Philippine Islands. The stories were heinously cruel to her father and mother, who mourned her in Nimrim and repented dismally of their harshness to the best and pirtiest girl ever lived.

Meanwhile Kedzie sold candy and ate less and less of it. She began to see more pretentious phases of city life and to be discontent with her social triumph. She began to understand how cheap her lovers were. She called them “mutts.” She came to suffer agonies of remorse at the liberties she had given them.

Mr. Kalteyer, the chewing-gum prince, in an effort to overcome the handicap of weight and age which Mr. Hoke did not carry, told Kedzie that her picture ought to be on every counter in the world, and he could get it there. He'd love to see her presented as a classy dame showing her ivories and proving how “beneficiary” his chewing-gum was for the teeth as well as the digestion.

Kedzie told the delicatessen merchant's wife all about his glorious promises, and she said, very sagely:

“Bevare vit dose bo'quet fellers. Better as so many roses is it he should brink you a slice roastbif once. Lengwidge of flowers is nice, but money is de svell talker. Take it by me, money is de svell talker!”

Kedzie was glad of such wisdom, and she convinced Mr. Kalteyer that it took more than conversation to buy her favor. He kept his word under some duress, and took Kedzie to Mr. Eben E. Kiam, a manufacturer of show-cards and lithographs, with an advertising agency besides.

Mr. Edam studied her poses and smiles for days before he got her at her best. An interested observer and a fertile suggester in his office was a young Mr. Gilfoyle, who wrote legends for show-cards, catch-lines for new wares, and poems, if pressed.

Gilfoyle had the poet's prophetic eye, and he murmured to Mr. Kiam that there were millions in “Miss Adair's” face and form if they were worked right. He took pains to let Kedzie overhear this. It pleased her. Millions were something she decided she would like.

Gilfoyle developed wonderfully in the sun of Kedzie's interest. He told Kalteyer that there was no money in handling chewing-gum in a small way as a piker; what he wanted was a catchy name, a special selling-argument, and a national publicity campaign. He advised Kalteyer to borrow a lot of money at the banks and sling himself.

Kalteyer breathed hard. Gilfoyle was assailed by an epilepsy of inspirations. In place of “Kalteyer's Peerless Gum,” he proposed the enthralling title, “Breathasweeta.” Others had mixed pepsin in their edible rubber goods of various flavors. Gilfoyle proposed perfume!

Kalteyer was astounded at the boy's genius. He praised him till Kedzie began to think him worth cultivation, especially as he proposed to flood the country with portraits of Kedzie as the Breathasweeta Girl.

The muse of advertising swooped down and whispered to Gilfoyle the delicious lines to be printed under Kedzie's smile.

Kalteyer was swept off his feet. He ran to the bank while Kiam raised Gilfoyle's salary.

The life-size card of Kedzie was made with a prop to hold it up. It was so much retouched and altered in the printing that her own father, seeing it in a Nimrim drugstore, never recognized it. Nearly every drug-store in the country set up a Kedzie in its show-window.

The Breathasweeta came into such demand that Kalteyer was temporarily bankrupted by prosperity. He had to borrow so much money to float his wares that he had none for Kedzie's entertainment.

Mr. Kiam took her up as a valuable model for advertising purposes.

He aroused in Kedzie an inordinate appetite for pictures of herself. All day long she was posed in costumes for various calendars, as a farmer's daughter, as a society queen, as a camera girl, as a sausage nymph, and as the patron saint of a brewery.

In a week she had arrived at classic poses in Greek robes. One by one these were abbreviated, till Kedzie was being very generally revealed to the public eye.

The modesty her mother had whipped into her was gradually unlearned step by step, garment by garment, without Kedzie's noticing the change in her soul.