"No. 2884 Child, W. Pay Envelope. Details under flap," Winifred read
on the neat, pale-brown packet put into her hand the night when she
had served Peter Rolls for a week--or was it five hundred weeks? "READ
THE OTHER SIDE" was printed in capital letters of white upon a black
background on the flap which must be torn open to get at the contents
and "details." The latter consisted of "Deductions, Absent, Late
Fines, Keys, Mdse., Stamps, Beneficial Ass., and Sub. Slips."

But Win had been neither absent nor late. Being an extra hand only,
and liable to be "dispensed with" at the end of the holidays, she had
not needed to subscribe her hard-earned pennies to Beneficial
Assurance, that huge fund made up of weekly coppers, whose interest
was to Peter Rolls almost what "Peter's Pence" are to the Pope. Thanks
to her good health and good behaviour, "Cash Enclosed" (as secretly
mentioned under the flap) was practically intact. But it had been a
nightmare week which seemed longer than all the past weeks of her life
added together and if she had earned a hundred dollars instead of six
she would not have felt too highly paid.

She moved wearily away from the office window, obeying the directions
to "read other side," and as she walked down the long corridor (her
sore feet causing her to limp slightly) the words "_if sick or
disabled, notify employment bureau at once_" sang through her head,
keeping time with her uneven steps.

She _was_ "reading the other side," the other side of life which
appeared to her as separate from the side she had known as the bright
was separate from the dark side of the moon; the side about which
people seldom troubled and never saw. A few weeks ago, before that
"wild spirit" of hers lured her half across the world to find
independence, she would have thought, feeling as she felt to-night,
that she was both sick and disabled. But now she knew that hundreds of
other girls under this very roof felt just as she felt, and that they
took it for granted as a normal condition of life. They hardly pitied
themselves, and she must be as stoical. If once she lost courage, she
might do the thing she had boasted to Peter Rolls, Jr., that she would
never do--cry.

She thought to find a tonic effect from the sight of money earned, and
in taking out her six dollars, she let fall a slip of white paper from
the pay envelope. It fluttered away, to alight on the floor, and Win's
heart beat as she picked it up.

H