to him attentively.

She came back from her reverie on hearing Steptoe say:

"With madam it's a cyse of beginning from the ground up, more or less
as you would with a byby; so I 'ope madam'll forgive me if I drop a
'int as to what we must do before goin' any farther."

Once more he read her question in the starry little flames in her
eyes.

"It's--clothes."

The damask red which had ebbed surged slowly back again. It surged
back under the transparent white skin, as red wine fills a glass. Her
lips parted to stammer the confession that she had no clothes except
those she wore; but she couldn't utter a syllable.

"I understand madam's position, which is why I mention it. You might
sye as clothes is the ABC of social life, and if we're to work from
the ground up we must begin there."

She forced it out at last, but the statement seemed to tear her.

"I can't get clothes. I ain't got no money."

"Oh, money's no hobject," he smiled. "Mr. Rash 'as plenty of that, and
I know what 'e'd like me to do. There never was 'is hequal for the
'open 'and. If madam'll leave it to me...."

* * * * *

Allerton's office was much what you would have expected it to be,
bearing to other offices the same relation as he to other business
men. He had it because not to have it wouldn't have been respectable.
A young American who didn't go to an office every day would hardly
have been a young American. An office, then, was a concession to
public sentiment, as well as some faint justification of himself.

It was in the latter sense that he chiefly took it, making it a
subject of frequent reference. In his conversation such expressions as
"my office," or "due at my office," were introduced more often than
there was occasion for. The implication that he had work to do gave
him status, enabling him to sit down among his cronies and
good-naturedly take their fun.

He took a good deal of fun, never having succeeded in making himself
the standardized type who escapes the shafts of ridicule. It was
kindly fun, which, while viewing him as a white swan in a flock of
black ones, recognized him as a swan, and this was as much as he could
expect. To pass in the crowd was all he asked for, even when he only
passed on bluff. If he couldn't wholly hide the bluff he could keep it
from being flagrantly obtrusive; and toward that end an office was a
help.

It was an office situated just where you would have