cago."

"Oh, no; I'm from the country. I didn't go to Chicago till I was twenty.
I lived all my life on a farm in Iowa, till I went up to get a job in
Chicago after my father died and I was all alone in the world. We lived
in the very wildest part of the State--in the part they call the 'Big
Woods.' Oh, I know all about frontier life. And there's hardly any kind
of 'roughing it' that I haven't done. I was born to it."

She laughed, opening the stove door, for the elbow of the pipe was now
red-hot and threatening conflagration to the thin board partition
behind, which divided the little room from that of the next lodger.

A loud thump upon the board partition startled us. We listened for a
few moments,--at first with alarm,--and then realized that the noise was
only the protest of a sleepy boarder.

Presently, as we continued to talk, the banging of a shoe-heel on the
wall grew more insistent. We heard doors opening along the hall, and a
high, raucous voice invoked quiet in none too polite phrase. So I said,
"Good night," in a whisper and tiptoed to my own door.

Thus began my acquaintance with Minnie Plympton--an acquaintance which,
ripening later into a warm friendship, was to have an incalculable
influence upon my life.

II

IN WHICH I START OUT IN QUEST OF WORK

When I woke up the next morning it was to find a weight of homesickness
lying heavy upon my heart--homesickness for something which, alas! no
longer existed save in memory. Then I remembered the girl on the floor
below, and soon I was dressing with a light heart, eager to hurry down
to breakfast. I was somewhat disappointed to find that she had eaten her
breakfast and gone. I went out upon the stoop, hailed a newsboy, and
sought my skylight bedroom.

It was with a hope born of youth and inexperience that I now gave
systematic attention to "HELP WANTED--Female." I will confess that at
first I was ambitious to do only what I chose to esteem "lady-like"
employment. I had taught one winter in the village school back home, and
my pride and intelligence naturally prompted me to a desire to do
something in which I could use my head, my tongue, my wits--anything,
in fact, rather than my hands. The advertisements I answered all held
out inducements of genteel or semi-genteel nature--ladies' companions;
young women to read aloud to blind gentlemen and to invalids; assistants
in doctors' and dentists' offices, and for the reception-room of
photograph