e now that she believed it all herself; one glance into
her steady blue eyes, in which a telltale moisture was already
gathering, was proof of that.

"No, indeed," continued Miss Manners: "I haven't always been a
working-girl. I used to go to boarding-school. I thought I'd be a
governess or something, and once I tried to learn bookkeeping, but my
eyes give out, and the figures mixed up my brain so, and then I got sick
and had to come to this box-factory. But I'm the first Manners that ever
worked."

I was now thoroughly ashamed of my first unjust suspicions that
Henrietta might not be strictly truthful, and I inquired with sincere
interest as to the fate of her ill-starred family.

"All dead and sleeping in our family vault," she replied wistfully. "But
don't let us talk anything more about it. I get so worked up and mad
when I talk about the Mannerses and the way they treated me and my poor
parents!"

The threatened spell with Henrietta's nerves was averted by a sudden
turning on of the power, and the day's work began. Phoebe did not appear
to claim me, and I worked away as fast as I could to help swell
Henrietta's dividends.

"I guess you can stay with her the rest of the day," Annie Kinzer said,
stopping at the table. "The 'Moonlight Maids' must have been too much
for Phoebe. Guess she won't show up to-day."

Henrietta was naturally delighted with the arrangement, which would add
a few pennies to her earnings. "I only made sixty cents yesterday, and I
worked like a dog," she remarked. "It was a bad day for everybody. We
ought to make more than a dollar to-day. Phoebe says you're a hustler."

Our job was that of finishing five hundred ruching-boxes. Henrietta
urged me frequently to hurry, as we were away behind with the order. I
soon discovered that for all her Manners blood and alleged gentle
breeding, she was a harder taskmaster than the good-natured but plebeian
Phoebe. Her obvious greed for every moment of my time, for every
possible effort of my strength and energy, I gladly excused, however,
when she revealed the fact that all her surplus earnings went toward the
support of a certain mission Sunday-school in which she was a teacher.
The conversation drifted from church matters to my own personal affairs.

"Isn't it awful lonesome living alone in a room?"

"How did you know I lived in a room?" I inquired in surprise, with the
uncomfortable feeling that I had been the subject of ill-natured gossip.

"O