There was no welcome on Mrs. Mussel's mat, but I'm still glowing.
Aren't you both immensely pleased with me? I am with myself!

J.

CHAPTER XIV

_The Next Night._

MY DEARS,

You know, the woman who runs the Stupidity Bureau didn't think me a
heroine at all! Quitting your job at the end of the first week, going
off explosively, as I did, doesn't endear the Honest Working Girl to
the management. It simply isn't done. She was so frigid that I
decided to scratch domestic labor from my list. I shall join the
gainful army in the busy marts.

Mrs. Mussel telephoned to the Stranger's Friend and the kind little
S.F. bustled right out and took me to a stereopticon lecture on the
bee. Subtle, wasn't it? Treatment by indirection.

And she gave me a note to a department store which will probably take
me on.

Meanwhile,

G--N--

J.

_Next Night._

They did, dear people, they did. In the basement. In the kitchen
ware. All day long I was learning to sell clothespins and eggbeaters
and wringers and cookie cutters and I wish you could see my hands! I
wonder if they'd consider me up stage if I wore gloves? I'd better
not chance it.

They were all ever so decent about helping me. The floorwalker was
especially kind. (I can see you fling up your head like a warhorse at
the smell of powder, Emma Ellis, but he's a meek young thing who
likes to burble of his baby.)

But I'm a woman of my word and this chronicle is faithful and true.
Coming home on the L, I saw the beamish Buffalo, and he saw me and
plunged to me through the crowd, saying gleefully, "Say, girlie, I've
thought of you a million times, and I--say, listen, I got in awful
Dutch with the wife about you, and she said"--but I slipped nimbly
into my local and the door slapped shut between us.

Your heroines, Emma, were not so light on their feet. But I honestly
felt mean,--he did look so friendly and fat.

I'm to have eight a week in my basement. Mrs. Mussel gets five of it
and the rest I may waste in riotous living.

Good night!

JANE.

_Three Nights Later._

DEAR M.D. AND E.E.,

Please dash downtown and have a million service medals struck off and
then rush around and pin them on all the shop girls in the world! The
unutterable we