pretty as you are when I was a girl," Mrs.
Quincy said. "And that was all the good it did. I thought I was making a
grand marriage when I got your father; but he seemed to sort of flatten
out and lose all his ambition after we was married. He didn't seem to
care about anything, though I used to give him my opinion pretty plain.
And it's mighty little he left me when he was took," she added
vindictively.

Her daughter eyed her speculatively.

"Well, I'm not going to be taken in the way you were," she said sharply.
"You thought a good old name and a promising career were enough; and
father didn't keep his promises. I want money and not the promise of
money."

"And where will you find him?" sniffed Mrs. Quincy, to whom "it" and
"he" were synonymous. "I don't notice any millionaires crowding up to
you, for all your big eyes and your great opinion of yourself."

"That's just it. If I could only meet them!" Lena got up and walked
restlessly about the room. Her eyes fell on the last night's copy of the
_Star_, opened to that chatty column headed "Woman's Fancies". She had
read it with absorbed interest. Her body halted now, for the muscles
often stop work when the mind becomes possessed of a great idea. She
stood for a long time and looked from the unwashed window-pane while a
new resolve slowly hardened itself within.

"I'll try, I'll try, I'll try," she said to herself, and her heart
thumped uncomfortably. "And if I take it to the office myself, when they
see me perhaps they--"

Aloud she said nothing, for she had early learned the great lesson that
the best way of getting her own will with her mother was to do what she
wished first and argue about it afterward.

"What have we got for supper, mother?" she asked.

"Nothing," said Mrs. Quincy sharply.

"Nothing? Well, give me some money and let me go and get something."

Mrs. Quincy reluctantly lifted her skirt and began to explore her
petticoat below. She shook open the mouth of a pocket into which she
dived to return with a knotted handkerchief. Lena looked on impatiently
as the knot was slowly untied and a small hoard of silver disclosed.

"There," said Mrs. Quincy. "You can take this quarter, Lena, and do get
something nourishing. Don't buy cream-cakes. I feel the need of what
will stay my stomach."

"I'll get baked-beans," answered the girl with a short laugh.

"Yes, do. I shan't have another cent till next pay-day comes. We've got
to make this last. Get s