n cold nights. And now I am in an office--all the
fellows are dandy and polite--not like the floor superintendent where I
worked in a department store; he would call down a cash-girl for making
change slow--! I have a chance to do anything a man can do. The boss is
just crazy to find women that will take an _interest_ in the work, like
it was their own you know, he told you so himself--"

"Sure, I know the line of guff," said Mrs. Lawrence. "And you take an
interest, and get eighteen plunks per for doing statistics that they
couldn't get a real college male in trousers to do for less than
thirty-five."

"Or put it like this, Lawrence," said Jennie Cassavant. "Magen admits
that the world in general is a muddle, and she thinks offices are heaven
because by comparison with sweat-shops they are half-way decent."

The universal discussion was on. Everybody but Una and the nun of
business threw everything from facts to bread pills about the table, and
they enjoyed themselves in as unfeminized and brutal a manner as men in
a cafe. Una had found some one with whom to talk her own shop--and shop
is the only reasonable topic of conversation in the world; witness
authors being intellectual about editors and romanticism; lovers
absorbed in the technique of holding hands; or mothers interested in
babies, recipes, and household ailments.

After dinner they sprawled all over the room of Una and Mrs. Lawrence,
and talked about theaters, young men, and Mrs. Fike for four solid
hours--all but the pretty, boyish Rose Larsen, who had a young man
coming to call at eight. Even the new-comer, Una, was privileged to take
part in giving Rose extensive, highly detailed, and not entirely proper
advice--advice of a completeness which would doubtless have astonished
the suitor, then dressing somewhere in a furnished room and unconscious
of the publicity of his call. Una also lent Miss Larsen a pair of silk
stockings, helped three other girls to coerce her curly hair, and formed
part of the solemn procession that escorted her to the top of the stairs
when the still unconscious young man was announced from below. And it
was Una who was able to see the young man without herself being seen,
and to win notoriety by being able to report that he had smooth black
hair, a small mustache, and carried a stick.

Una was living her boarding-school days now, at twenty-six. The presence
of so many possible friends gave her self-confidence and
self-expression