ntly wished he would not
try to do anything more for her, now. After sleeping upon the facts of
their meeting she felt sure that he would not try. She approved of
herself for not having asked him to call in parting. She was almost
glad that he hardly had given her a chance to do so.

It was Saturday night when Cornelia arrived, and she spent Sunday
writing home a full account of her adventures to her mother, whom she
asked to give Mrs. Barton the note she enclosed, and in looking over
her drawings, and trying to decide which she should take to the
Synthesis with her. She had a good deal of tacit argument about them
with Mr. Ludlow, who persisted in her thoughts after several definitive
dismissals; and Monday morning she presented herself with some drawings
she had chosen as less ridiculous than some of the others, and hovered
with a haughty humility at the door of the little office till the
janitor asked her if she would not come in and sit down. He had
apparently had official experience of cases like hers; he refused
without surprise the drawings which she offered him as her credentials,
and said the secretary would be in directly. He did not go so far as to
declare his own quality, but he hospitably did what he could to make
her feel at home.

Numbers of young people began to appear, singly and in twos and threes,
and then go out again, and go on up the stairs which led crookedly to
and from the corner the office was cramped into. Some of them went up
stairs after merely glancing into the office, others found letters
there, and staid chatting awhile. They looked at Cornelia with merely
an identifying eye, at first, as if they perceived that she was a new
girl, but as if new girls were such an old story that they could not
linger long over one girl of the kind. Certain of the young ladies
after they went up stairs came down in long, dismal calico aprons that
covered them to the throat, and with an air of being so much absorbed
in their work that they did not know what they had on. They looked at
Cornelia again, those who had seen her before, and those who had not,
made up for it by looking at her twice, and Cornelia began to wonder if
there was anything peculiar about her, as she sat upright, stiffening
with resentment and faintly flushing under their scrutiny. She wore her
best dress, which was a street dress, as the best dress of a village
girl usually is; her mother had fitted it, and they had made it
themselves,