m for twenty cents
because they are the best of their kind. I am glad you like them. I want
to earn my living and my mother's. She is sick, and I have to stay at
home with her. And I don't mind being called 'Sandwich Jane.' It's a
good name and I shall use it in my business. But I don't like being
treated as you have treated me to-night. If it happens again I shall
have to stop selling sandwiches; and I'd be sorry to have that happen,
and I hope you'd be sorry too."

Her little speech was over. She stepped down composedly from the box,
folded her cloth and picked up her basket. She said "Thank you" to
O-liver, "Come on" to Tommy, and walked from among them with her light
step and free carriage; and they stared after her.

O-liver sitting later in front of the post-office with his satellites
round him found himself compelled to listen to praise of Jane.

"She's made a hit," Atwood said earnestly. "When a woman talks like that
it's the straight goods."

Henry agreed. "She's got grit. It's her kind that get ahead. But it's a
pity that she's got to work to make a living."

Atwood, too, thought it was a pity. And presently he and Henry fell into
silence as they fitted Jane into various dreams. Atwood's dream had to
do with a mansion high on Frisco's hills. But Henry saw her beside him
in his long and lovely car. He saw her, too, in a fur coat.

V

"I feel," said Jane, "like a murderer." Tommy and O-liver had stopped at
her front gate to leave her some books.

"Why?" It was O-liver who asked it.

"Come and see." She led them round the house. Death and destruction
reigned.

"I poured gasoline into the ants' nests and set them on fire--and now
look at them!"

There were a few survivors toiling among the ruins.

"They are taking out the dead bodies," Jane explained. "It's so human
that it's tragic. I'll never do it again."

"You can't let them eat you up."

"I know. It's one of the puzzles." She sat looking down at them. "How
busy they are!"

"Too busy," O-liver stated. "They are worse than bees. There are at
least some drones in the hive."

"Poor drones," said Jane.

"Why?" quickly.

"To miss the best."

"Is work the best?"

She said "Yes," adding after a little: "I don't just mean making
sandwiches. That's just a beginning. There's everything ahead."

She said it as if the world were hers. O-liver, in spite of himself, was
thrilled. "How do you know that everything is ahead?"

"I shall make