and gave the chauffeur ten dollars in advance.
Now Angie was, at this epoch (if it were an epoch, and not a mere spasm), a Collector of Burnt Matches for the Unsold Spaghetti Company. She got a dollar per 10,000—when she got it. But it is hard work collecting burnt matches in Winter, so hard that many have given it up in despair the very first year, and gone in for First Editions or Sheffield Plate, instead. It’s especially hard when you haven’t any friends except old ladies who don’t smoke, and use only two or three matches a day, for lighting the gas stove.
Working from seven in the morning to a similar number p. m. she had, so far, amassed only a scant 5,000. Most of them, besides, were very short and dark complected and some had never been anything but Swedish matches at best. Not a noble hoard. But it was something. Almost anything is.
With this collection, she set out, one day for the Main Office. Boldly she approached the President, a man famous for his side whiskers, raised under glass.
“Well, have you 10,000 already?” he
