esh shirt-waist and sailor-hat. She was smiling at me
like a princess issuing from her enchantment in a rose-bush; and lest
she should vanish as suddenly as she had appeared, I clutched wildly at
her arm, trembling and sobbing at this delicious awakening from the
horrible nightmare that had been my existence for so many days.

We were standing on the corner of Lexington Avenue and a cross-town
thoroughfare, and ever after must that spot remain in my mind as the
actual turning-point of my fortunes--indeed, the very turning-point of
my whole life. As I look back upon that beautiful June evening, I again
hear the rumble of the elevated trains in the street beyond, and again I
hear the clang of the electric cars as they swirl out of the avenue into
the street. Probably every man and woman who ever came a stranger to a
great city has his or her own particular secret and holy place where
angels came and ministered in the hour of need. I do not doubt it, but
I do often wonder whether every such person visits his sacred place as
often as I visit mine. I go to mine very often, especially in
summer-time, about six o'clock, when, amid the roar and the turmoil and
the banalities of the real and the actual, I recall the wondrous tale of
the Burning Bush. For there God appeared to me that evening--the God who
had hidden his face for so long.

"Why, you look as weak as a kitten--you look sick!" Minnie declared.
"You need a good cup of tea and to be put to bed, and I'm going to be
the one to do it for you!"

I was half dazed as Minnie Plympton bundled me into a passing electric
car; and then, with my head leaning comfortably on Minnie Plympton's
plump shoulder, and with Minnie Plympton's strong arm about my aching
body, I was jolted away somewhere into a drowsy happiness.

EPILOGUE

Three years have elapsed since that last day in the "Pearl Laundry" and
my providential meeting with Minnie Plympton.

The events of those three years may be recounted in almost as few
sentences, for prosperous working girls, like happy nations, have no
history. And we have been very prosperous, Minnie Plympton and I. We, I
say, because from the moment of our unforeseen meeting in the
hurly-burly of that street corner, the interests of Minnie Plympton's
life and of mine were to become, for the succeeding year, almost
inseparable.

I said we have both been very prosperous. But Minnie Plympton has been
more than that: she has been successful