him that
Mrs. Griggs wanted to see him.

Mrs. Griggs was Madame nowhere except on her sign and in the mouths
of a few genteel patrons who considered that Madame had a more
fashionable sound than Mrs.

"Ask her to come in here," Anderson said, and directly the dressmaker
appeared. She was a tiny, thin, nervous creature with restless,
veinous little hands, and a long, thin neck upon which her small
frizzled head vibrated constantly like the head of a bird. Anderson
knew her very well. Back in his childhood they had been schoolmates.
He remembered distinctly little Stella Mixter. She had been a sharp,
meagre, but rather pretty little girl, with light curls, and was
always dressed in blue. She wore blue now, for that matter--blue
muslin, ornate with lace and ribbons. She had had a sad and hard
life, but her spirit still asserted itself. Her husband had deserted
her; she had lost her one child; she worked like a galley-slave, but
she still frizzed her hair carefully, and never neglected her own
costume even in her greatest rush of business, and that in a
dressmaker showed deathless ambition and self-respect.

Anderson greeted her and offered her a chair. She seated herself with
a conscious elegance, and disposed gracefully around her thin knees
her blue muslin flounces. There was a slight coquetry in her manner,
although she was evidently anxious about something. She looked around
and spoke in a low voice.

"I want to ask you something," she said, in a whisper.

"Certainly," said Anderson.

"You used to be a lawyer, and I don't suppose you have forgotten all
your law, if you are in the grocery business now." There was about
the woman the very naivete of commonplacedness and offence.

Anderson smiled. "I trust not, Mrs. Griggs," he replied.

"Well"--she lowered her voice still more--"I wanted to ask you-- I've
got a big job of work for--that Carroll girl that's going to be
married, and I've heard something that made me kind of uneasy. What I
want to know is, do you s'pose I'm likely to get my pay?"

"I know nothing whatever about the family's financial standing,"
Anderson replied, after a slight pause. He spoke constrainedly, and
did not look at his questioner.

"You don't know whether I'm likely to get my pay or not?"

Anderson looked at her then, the little, nervous, overworked, almost
desperate creature, fighting like a little animal in her bay of life
against the odds which would drive her from it, and he fe