introductory remarks, Cassavant.
I'm inspired to-night. I'm going to take a plate of bean soup and fit it
over Ma Fike's head--upside down."

"Oh, give Ma Fike a rest!"

Una was uneasy. She wasn't sure whether this repartee was friendly good
spirits or a nagging feud. Like all the ungrateful human race, she
considered whether she ought to have identified herself with the noisy
Esther Lawrence on entering the Home. So might a freshman wonder, or the
guest of a club; always the amiable and vulgar Lawrences are most
doubted when they are best-intentioned.

Una was relieved when she was welcomed by the four:

Mamie Magen, the lame Jewess, in whose big brown eyes was an eternal
prayer for all of harassed humanity.

Jennie Cassavant, in whose eyes was chiefly a prayer that life would
keep on being interesting--she, the dark, slender, loquacious, observant
child who had requested Mrs. Lawrence to shut up.

Rose Larsen, like a pretty, curly-haired boy, though her shoulders were
little and adorable in a white-silk waist.

Mrs. Amesbury, a nun of business, pale and silent; her thin throat
shrouded in white net; her voice low and self-conscious; her very blood
seeming white--a woman with an almost morbid air of guarded purity, whom
you could never associate with the frank crudities of marriage. Her
movements were nervous and small; she never smiled; you couldn't be
boisterous with her. Yet, Mrs. Lawrence whispered she was one of the
chief operators of the telephone company, and, next to the thoughtful
and suffering Mamie Magen, the most capable woman she knew.

"How do you like the Tempest and Protest, Miss Golden?" the lively
Cassavant said, airily.

"I don't--"

"Why! The Temperance and Protection Home."

"Well, I like Mrs. Fike's shoes. I should think they'd be fine to throw
at cats."

"Good work, Golden. You're admitted!"

"Say, Magen," said Mrs. Lawrence, "Golden agrees with me about
offices--no chance for women--"

Mamie Magen sighed, and "Esther," she said, in a voice which must
naturally have been rasping, but which she had apparently learned to
control like a violin--"Esther dear, if you could ever understand what
offices have done for me! On the East Side--always it was work and work
and watch all the pretty girls in our block get T. B. in
garment-factories, or marry fellows that weren't any good and have a
baby every year, and get so thin and worn out; and the garment-workers'
strikes and picketing o