bbed her hands with satisfaction and looked at Betty, who
beamed back at her. The girl, encouraged by Nancy's kindly smile took
a step forward, and began to recite her qualifications for the
position. Dick fumbled with a fountain-pen which he placed elaborately
behind his ear for an instant, and then as ostentatiously removed.

"I think you're losing a hairpin, Dick," Billy suggested solicitously,
as Nancy, ignoring their existence entirely, proceeded to make terms
with the newcomer.

The next girl created a diversion--being palpably an adventuress out
of a job and impressing none of the quartette as being interesting
enough to deserve one,--but the two girls who followed her were bright
and sprightly creatures, disarmingly graceful and ingenuous, of whom
the entire quartette approved. They were twin sisters, they said,
Dolly and Molly, and they had always had places together ever since
they had begun working out.

"Tell me, pretty maiden, _are_ there any more at home _like_--" Billy
was addressing Molly gravely when Dick slipped a friendly but firm
hand over his jugular region, and cut off his utterance.

"He's not feeling quite himself," he explained suavely to Dolly,
"but we'll bring him around soon.--I think you'll find Miss Martin
an ideal person to work for, and the salary and the hours unusually
satisfactory."

"Thank you, sir," said Molly and Dolly together, in the English manner
which showed the excellence of their training.

There were several other dubby creatures so much out of the picture
that they were not even considered, and then Michael brought in what
he called "a grand girl," and left her standing statuesquely in their
midst.

"With large lovely arms and a neck like a tower," Dick quoted in his
throat.

Nancy engaged her without enthusiasm.

"She'll draw," she said briefly. "Personally, I dislike these Alma
Tadema girls."

"What the men see," Betty said, curling around the better part of two
straight dining chairs, in the moment of relaxation that followed the
final disposition of the business of the day, "in a girl like that
first one is one of the mysteries of existence."

"I know it," Nancy agreed, with New England colloquialism. "You feel
reasonably allied to them as a sex, and then suddenly they show some
vulgar preference for a woman like that, and it's all off."

"This from the woman who thinks my chauffeur is an ideal of manly
beauty," Dick scoffed, "a dimpled man with a little