Summary
A gutter-bred news-seller, christened “Sticks” for her match-thin frame, polices a soot-choked curbstone empire where headlines are hollered, not read. One dusk she shields her best patron—James Morgan, silk-hatted heir to a railroad fortune—from brass-knuckled extortionists; both children are coshed senseless, freight-lifted into the clanging dark, and vomited out beside a whistle-stop town that smells of cedar and creosote. Believing themselves orphaned by the city, they carve a pocket Eden: Sticks hawks papers to farmers, Morgan swings a sledge for the Northern & Pacific, and their candle-lit shack becomes a chapel of whispered ambitions. Yet the gilded world refuses burial; Morgan père and Ruth Borden—diamond-bright fiancée—descend in a private car to reclaim the prodigal. Overhearing that filial duty, not love, anchors Morgan to the hamlet, Sticks vanishes into night rain, is adopted by a copper magnate, and transmutes into Alice Montrose, society-page sphinx. Years later, Morgan, now steel-crowned baron, strides into a lakefront ballroom to negotiate ore tariffs and finds the newsboy he mourned draped in velvet. Memory, fierce as a lit fuse, re-ignites; they speak once, twice, thrice, and on the fourth breath decide the only territory worth defending is the shared acre between two palms.
Alice, a little newsgirl known as "Sticks", spends her time fighting for her territory against a lot of tough kids. When Sticks witnesses an attack upon her favorite customer, the wealthy young James Morgan, she tries to defend him and, as a result, they are both knocked unconscious by the thugs and thrown on a baggage car. Awakening in a small town, they decide to stay. Morgan finds a job with the railroad and they take up house in a small cottage until Morgan's father and his sweetheart Ruth Borden discover his hiding place. Overhearing their conversation, Sticks thinks that Morgan is staying just for her and so she leaves him and later is adopted by a wealthy man. Morgan loses all sight of his little pal until years later when he chances to visit her adoptive father's house on business and finds her. Discovering that their strong attachment has endured through the years, the two decide to marry.
