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working together. At any rate this, combined with the information that Malka Lelchuck had learned gymnastics, suggested to me that these so-called unfortunates were a good deal better off than I. Furthermore, I could not stop toying with the novelty of a compliment. Someone thought I had pretty hair. The unfortunates had looked at me with wonder and admiration. I passed the trolley ride home aflame with self-glory.
    By dinner time the surprise of becoming an intrepid doer of good works
and
a beauty had so drained me I was unable to give an account of myself.
    “I feared as much,” Ma said. “You have caught a disease and now we shall all pay for your recklessness.”
    That night I dreamed of pickles that turned somersaults and ducks with no feathers and when I woke next morning I had a circle of itching red weals around each ankle. I had brought home with me from Stanton Street a deputation of fleas. Ma had the house dismantled. The floors were scrubbed with brown soap. Small dishes of camphor were burned in every room. And every surface was dabbed with kerosene until an inevitable encounter between a naked flame and kerosene fumes deprived Reilly of her eyebrows, and consequently us of our cook.
    As the Irish had been dismissed just days before for ferrying quantities of canned goods out of our pantry and home to her mother, carrying them away under her skirts, the final reckoning was that we were reduced to one housemaid, one parlor maid and a person who came in weekly to do mending and alterations. We faced social ruin and starvation, and all because of my headstrong expedition down amongst “the element.”
    “I hope,” Ma said, “you are quite satisfied.”
    But I wasn't. On reflection, from the safe haven of West 76th Street, I decided I wanted more expeditions. I wanted to ride on trolley-cars, and maybe even on the elevated railway. I wanted to do good works amongst grateful people who admired my hair. I wanted to taste a cherry blintz.
    But further visits to Delancey Street were unthinkable for a while. I was in trouble, and my disgrace was intensified by our having to dine every night with Aunt Fish and Uncle Israel until the first in a series of unsatisfactory replacements for Reilly began her duties. Even then it was many weeks before I sensed any letup in my aunt's watchful disapproval. In fact it wasn't until November and the occasion of my seventeenth birthday that I felt I had finally been forgiven.
    “Getting to be quite the young lady, Pops,” said Uncle Israel.
    He and Aunt Fish gave me a sketchbook and a metal box with little blocks of paint.
    “Watercolors. An elegant and suitable occupation for you, Poppy,” explained Aunt Fish.
    “How kind,” said Ma, “and how timely, now that you will be settling down to your duties at home.”
    I heard a door slam shut on my career as a brave and beautiful benefactress.
    From Ma I received a new writing case, and from Baby Sherman Ulysses a framed photograph. My best gifts though were from Honey who, in addition to a dreary manicure set, brought me a bag of scraps from her dressmaker, a bag with pieces of pale green crêpe de chine and red taffeta and blue satin.
    I hugged her.
    “Well,” she said, “you are old enough now to stop chewing your nails, so I thought I'd encourage you. It's time you took more care in your toilette.”
    I said, “Why? We're not looking for a husband anymore.”
    Honey said that neat nails were an asset to anyone and Ma and Aunt Fish couldn't have agreed with her more.
    In a roundabout way I even received a gift from Reilly, who returned, on November fourteenth, and offered to give us just one more chance, thereby saving me from further nightly inspections at Aunt Fish's dinner table.
    I used my birthday scraps to make dolls' clothes, as Honey had intended, and when the scraps were all gone, I used my paints to plan what I should like to make next. Shiny, slippery dresses, and pantaloons with beads and tassels, and big,