it landed the manager on the
floor, and she briefly told him what was the matter. Then she
descended, and had the clerk order a coupe by telephone, and then
herself sent Dr. Floyd from across the street, while she ran to the
stable, leaped into the coupe before the horse was fairly hitched up,
and drove for Dr. Morris.

Dr. Morris found Mrs. Drupe already a widow when he arrived with the
cashier. The latter promptly secured the addresses of Mr. Drupe's
brother and of his business partner, again entered the coupe, and soon
had the poor woman in the hands of her friends.

The energetic girl went to her room that night exhilarated by her own
prompt and kind-hearted action. But the evil spirit that loves to mar
our happiness had probably arranged it that on that very evening she
received a note from the manager notifying her that her services would
not be required after one more week. On inquiry the next day she
learned that some of the ladies had complained of her behavior, and she
vainly tried to remember what she had done that was capable of
misconstruction. She also vainly tried to imagine how she was to live,
or by what means she was to contrive to get back to those who knew her
too well to suspect her of any evil. She was so much perplexed by the
desperate state of her own affairs that she even neglected to attend
Mr. Drupe's funeral, but she hoped that Mrs. Drupe would not take it
unkindly.

It was with a heavy heart that the manager called Miss Wakefield into
his office on the ground floor in order that he might pay her last
week's wages. He was relieved that she seemed to accept her dismissal
with cheerfulness.

"What are you going to do?" he asked timidly.

"Why, didn't you know?" she said. "I am to live with Mrs. Drupe as a
companion, and to look out for her affairs and collect her rents. I
used to think she didn't like me. But it will be a good lesson to those
ladies who found fault with me for nothing when they see how much Mrs.
Drupe thinks of me."

And she went her way to her new home in Mrs. Drupe's apartment, at the
end of the hall on the sixth floor, while the manager took from a
pigeonhole Mrs. Drupe's letter of complaint against the former cashier,
and read it over carefully.

The thickness of the walls at the base of so lofty a building made it
difficult for daylight to work its way through the tunnel-like windows,
so that in this office a gas jet was necessary in the daytime. After a
moment's