r midnight. Altogether they could give nearly
ten dollars.

The manager sidled awkwardly toward Catriona, when she came back from
washing her face. "Here, kid," she muttered sheepishly, pushing the money
into the little girl's hand. Catriona, pale and dazed, looked up at
her--looked at the money, with a shy excitement and happiness dawning in
her eyes. Then she cried again with excitement and joy, and every one
laughed, and sent her off again to wash her face.

That night everything was different in the department. There had been a
real miracle of transfiguration. The whole air of intercourse was
changed. All the girls were gentle and dignified with each other.
Catriona's eyes sparkled with pleasure. Her careworn air was gone. She
was a child again. She had never had any physical loveliness before; but
on that night hundreds of passing shoppers looked with attention at the
delight and beauty of her face.

On the next day everything went on as before. The girls snapped at each
other and jostled each other. The beautiful manager swore. One girl came,
looking so ill that Miss Johnson was terrified.

"Can't you stop, Kitty? You look so sick. For heaven's sake, go home and
rest."

"I can't afford to go home."

Cross and snappish as the girls were, they managed to spare Kitty, and to
stand in front of her to conceal her idleness from the floor-walker, and
give her a few minutes' occasional rest sitting down. She went through
the first hours of the morning as best she might, though clearly under
pressure of sharp suffering. But at about ten the floor-walker, for whom
it must be said that he was responsible for the sales and general
presentability of the department, saw her sitting down. "Why aren't you
busy?" he called. "Get up."

At midnight on Christmas eve, as the still crowd of girls walked wanly
out of the great store into the brilliant New York street, some one said,
"How are you, Kitty?"

She made no reply for a minute. Then she said wretchedly, "Oh--I hope
I'll be dead before the next Christmas."

V

The sheer and causeless misery this girl endured was, of course,
attributable, not only to the long hours and to the standing demanded by
her occupation, but to the fact that this occupation was continued at a
period when the normal health of great numbers of women demands
reasonable quiet and rest.

With a few honorable exceptions[5] it may be said to be the immemorial
custom of department stores in this