Widow's Mite
by C B. Gilford, Elizabeth Gibson

THE STORY: Mrs. Owen is not only tired of the rundown boarding house where she has lived since her husband's death, but she is also fed up with the nagging landlady, and sure that she cannot get down another mouthful of the boiled codfish that passes for dinner each evening.

Withdrawing her last two hundred odd dollars from the bank (and packing up the million dollars in worthless “Kingdom of Albania” bonds which her late husband has bought for five hundred dollars), she moves out, takes a cab to the posh Lakeside Hotel, and strides up to the desk like a great lady.

Making a considerable show of seeing to it that her “securities” are sealed in an envelope and locked in the safe, she passes herself off as a woman of wealth—and the management is only too glad to extend whatever credit she desires.

This proves to be quite a bit, and when the manager confronts her with the need to cash in her supposedly valuable bonds and pay up, she deftly puts him off by making him, and the others on the staff who have befriended her, her equal heirs.

She advises them that the time to sell is not yet ripe, but as her debts grow steadily larger they begin to lose their nerve—and cannot resist steaming open the envelope containing her bonds, much to their shock and dismay.

Obviously she must go—but where?

To a rival hotel, of course, to repay them for the time when they referred a destitute Maharajah to the Lakeside.

After that, who knows but there are plenty of hotels in town, and lots of impression-able people just waiting to be taken in by such a nice little old lady.