ere was absolutely no more excuse for doing
either; then I powdered my face, just enough to take the shine off,
filed my finger-nails, brushed my clothing, put on my borrowed collar,
and stepped out into the eating-room, feeling, if not looking, like the
"perfect lady" which the generous-hearted cashier declared I resembled
"as large as life."

"Never mind about the collar; you can just keep it," she said when I
returned her toilet articles. "It's not worth but a few cents, anyway,
and I've got plenty more of them.... Don't mention it at all; you're
perfectly welcome. I didn't do anything more for you than I'd expect
you to do for me if I was in such a pickle. If we working girls don't
stand up and help one another, I'd like to know who's going to do it for
us.... So long!"

"So long!" It was not the first time that I had heard a working girl
deliver herself of that laconic form of adieu, and heretofore I had
always execrated it as hopelessly vulgar and silly, which no doubt it
was and is. But from the lips of that kind-hearted woman it fell upon my
ears with a sort of lingering sweetness. It was redolent of hope and
good cheer.

The home for working girls I found, not very far away from this
lunch-room, in one of the streets south of Fourteenth Street and well
over on the East Side. It was a shabby, respectable, unfriendly-looking
building of red brick, with a narrow, black-painted arched door. On the
cross-section of the center panel was screwed a silver plate, with the
name of the institution inscribed in black letters, which gave to the
door the gruesome suggestion of a coffin set on end.

A polite pull at the rusty handle of the bell-cord brought no response,
and I rang again, a little louder. A chain was rattled and a bolt drawn
back. The lid of the black coffin flew open, disclosing, with the
suddenness of a jack-in-the-box, a withered old beldam with a large
brass key clutched in a hand that trembled violently with palsy.

She grumbled inarticulately, and with a jerk of her head motioned me
into a small room opening off the hall, while she closed and locked the
door with the great brass key.

The little reception-room, or office, was no more cheerful than the
front door, and, like it, partook somewhat of an ecclesiastical aspect.
Arranged in a sort of frieze about the room were a series of framed
scriptural texts, all of which served to remind one in no ambiguous
terms of the wrath of God toward the frowa