the toys she was about to purchase for a Christmas box for some young
cousins in the country. She had not been able to find just what she
wanted and was impatient in voice and manner as she explained to the
girl on the other side of the counter what she had hoped to find. She
was extravagantly gowned in a fashion not at all in good taste for
morning shopping, but she was pretty and her fair complexion, her
shining hair, soft and well cared for, the beautiful fur thrown back
over her shoulders fascinated the other girl and filled her heart with
envy. She was pale and anemic, her hair was dark and there was barely
enough of it to "do up" even when helped out by the puffs she had bought
from the counter on the opposite side. The weather had been bitterly
cold and she was suffering from sore throat and headache. She had turned
up the collar of her thin coat but it had failed to protect her and she
was thinking of that as she looked at the fur. She was worn out by the
strain of the Christmas season, had slept late, and then rushed to the
store with only a cup of coffee to help her do the work of the morning.
She did not care much whether the girl before her found the toys she
wanted or not. Toys seemed such a small part of life and Christmas
aroused in her all sorts of conflicting emotions. It was winter and life
looked very hard, as it can look to a girl of fourteen upon whom poverty
had laid a heavy hand and whose life has been robbed by the sins and
misfortunes of others, who has been handicapped from the beginning.

The girl before the counter finally decided upon the toys, ordered them
sent to her home and looking scornfully at the cheap jewelry and tawdry
ornaments passed out of the store. She was thinking what a nuisance
cousins were, how ridiculous it was in her father to insist each year
upon her remembering his poor relations at Christmas, just when she
needed all her allowance for herself, and planning to tell him that next
year she did not intend to do it. She was in a most unhappy mood because
she had been denied permission to attend a house-party and she could not
bear to be denied anything. She was handicapped by the heavy hand of
money, newly acquired by her father and by the atmosphere of pride,
vanity and social ambition which surrounded her.

All day through the busy streets of the shopping district they
passed--the city's handicapped girls. Some were held back from the best
that life can give by poverty