or dear!"

Yes, it was Ellen. She swept at once into the kitchen and stood a moment
glowering on the family with all the blackness of a storm-cloud. Then,
without a word, she flung herself into a chair.

"Why, Ellen dear," her mother gasped, "what's ailin' you?"

Beyond twitching her shoulders impatiently, Ellen made no answer.

"How do you do, Ellen?" Rosie spoke formally, in the tone of one not at
all certain as to how her own civility would be received.

Ellen glanced at her sharply. "Huh! So you're back, are you?"

"Ellen, Ellen," Mrs. O'Brien cried reprovingly, "is that the way you
talk to poor little Rosie and her just in from the country? And she
brought you two nice dressed chickens and a basket of fine fresh
vegetables and a box----"

Ellen cut her mother short with an impatient, "Aw, Ma, you dry up!"

"What's the matter, Ellen?" Terry drawled out. "Lost your job?"

For answer Ellen snatched off her hat and flung it angrily into the
corner.

"Ellen, Ellen!" Mrs. O'Brien cried. "Your new hat!" She started forward
to rescue the hat, then paused as the significance of Terry's question
reached her understanding. Her fluttering hands fell limp, her face took
on an expression at once scared and appealing. "Oh, Ellen dear, you
haven't lost your job, have you? Don't tell me you've lost your job!"

Ellen scowled at her mother darkly. "You bet your life I've lost my job!
I wouldn't have staid in that office another day for a thousand dollars!
They're nothing but a set of old grannies--every one of them!"

"Oh, Ellen!" Mrs. O'Brien dropped back helplessly into her chair. A look
of overwhelming disappointment settled on her face; her mouth quivered;
her eyes overflowed. "Oh, Ellen," she repeated, "how does it come that
ye've lost it?"

"Well, I guess you'd have lost it, too!" Ellen glared about the table
defiantly. "Any one would with that old fogy, old man Harrison, worrying
you to death with his old-maidish ways. He thinks people won't read his
old letters if every word ain't spelled just so and every comma and
period put in just right. The old fool! I'd like to know who cares about
spelling nowadays! I did one letter over for him today six times and the
sixth copy he tore up right in front of my face for nothing at all--a
t-h-e-i-r for a t-h-e-r-e and a couple of little things like that. I
tell you it made me hot under the collar and I just up and told him what
I thought of him."

"Ellen!" Mrs. O'Brien g