ands tightly together,
exclaimed:

"Oh, sir, if you can do anything for me----But I don't want to make you
think----" She paused in evident confusion, and Farnham kindly
interposed.

"What I may think is not of any consequence just now. What is it you
want, and how can I be of service to you?"

"Oh, it is a long story, and I thought it was so easy to tell, and I
find it isn't easy a bit. I want to do something--to help my parents--I
mean they do not need any help--but they can't help me. I have tried
lots of things." She was now stammering and blushing in a way that made
her hate herself mortally, and the innocent man in front of her tenfold
more, but she pushed on manfully and concluded, "I thought may be you
could help me get something I would like."

"What would you like?"

"Most anything. I am a graduate of the high school. I write a good
hand, but I don't like figures well enough to clerk. I hear there are
plenty of good places in Washington."

"I could do nothing for you if there were. But you are wrong: there are
no good places in Washington, from the White House down."

"Well, you are president of the Library Board, ain't you?" asked the
high-school graduate. "I think I would like to be one of the
librarians."

"Why would you like that?"

"Oh, the work is light, I suppose, and you see people, and get plenty
of time for reading, and the pay is better than I could get at anything
else. The fact is," she began to gain confidence as she talked, "I
don't want to go on in the old humdrum way forever, doing housework and
sewing, and never getting a chance at anything better. I have enough to
eat and to wear at home, but the soul has some claims too, and I long
for the contact of higher natures than those by whom I am now
surrounded. I want opportunities for self-culture, for intercourse with
kindred spirits, for the attainment of a higher destiny."

She delivered these swelling words with great fluency, mentally
congratulating herself that she had at last got fairly started, and
wishing she could have struck into that vein at the beginning. Farnham
was listening to her with more of pain than amusement, saying to
himself: "The high school has evidently spoiled her for her family and
friends, and fitted her for nothing else."

"I do not know that there is a vacancy in the library."

"Oh, yes, there is," she rejoined, briskly; "I have been to see the
librarian himself, and I flatter myself I made a favorab