would have
told it quickly enough.

"Well, I'm awfully glad he said so."

"Yes, it was very decent of him. Everybody knows though that you're a
fine worker--even old Corcoran himself, I'll be bound, although he
wouldn't admit it. You're quick, careful, prompt and never absent. What
else do they want? Oh, Corcoran was behind this, all right. It wasn't
your work sacked you. It was plain spite."

"I'm thankful for that!" sighed Louise.

"I'm not. It makes me hot," burst out Hal.

"Still, it is better than losing your place because your work was so
poor you couldn't hold the job," smiled the girl.

"I can't see it that way. This is just low down and unfair."

"But I don't mind that. I know I wasn't to blame."

"You bet you weren't. I wish I had Corcoran here. I'd shake the
daylights out of him."

"Whose daylights are going to be shaken out now?" inquired a laughing
voice, and the brother and sister turned to see Carl McGregor beside
them.

"Old Corcoran up at the works," snarled Hal. "He's given Louise the
sack!"

Carl did not speak. He knew only too well how genuine was this
disaster. In the sympathetic silence that followed the three young
persons seemed to draw closer together.

"It isn't as if Loulie had done anything to deserve such a slam," Hal
suddenly declared. "He's just taking out his spite on me and he's
chosen this means of doing it. To light on a woman! I'd a hundred times
rather he'd shipped me. But it's like him."

Moodily the three walked on.

"Of course, I must get some other place right away," Louise said
presently, as if thinking aloud. "I don't know just what. I've never
worked anywhere but in the mills and I have no other trade. To be
turned away from Davis and Coulter won't be much of a recommendation
for me either, I'm afraid."

"Oh, you can get a hundred jobs," announced Hal, with a confidence he
did not feel. "Don't you fret."

"I don't know." His sister shook her head. "Scores of Baileyville girls
are idle."

The statement met with no denial. Who could combat it? It was only too
true.

"Not girls like you," Carl ventured, determined to be optimistic.

"Girls exactly like me, Carlie," smiled Louise.

"Oh, you won't be idle," murmured Hal.

"I can't be--I simply can't. We've got to have money."

Once again her companions found themselves unable to refute the
declaration.

They had turned into the main thoroughfare of the town and were
threading their way along a side