to make the girl feel the dignity of
drudgery!" Mrs. Lenox said to herself.

"The stuck-up thing!" thought Lena; "rubbing it into me that she does
not have to work for her living."

She was tempted to make a sharp answer, but remembered her diplomacy and
held it in.

"Work isn't always so pleasant when you're in it," she said.

"Everything is apt to look rough around the edges until you hold it off
and get a view of it as a whole," Mrs. Lenox put in. "Even
love--sometimes. But I think that, next to love, work is about the best
thing in life."

"Oh, that depends," Madeline cried. "When I read papers at clubs, people
talk about my 'work', but nobody thinks that it is worth while. I'd like
to earn a dollar, just as a guaranty that some one thought the thing I
did was worth it."

"Gracious!" Lena exclaimed in genuine surprise. "Do you really feel that
way about earning money?"

"Don't you?" Madeline asked in return; and each looked at the other
uncomprehendingly.

"No, I don't," Lena burst out sullenly, but forgetting to be shy. "I
feel degraded by every dirty five-dollar bill I get by being a slavey.
People make you feel that way. You get it rubbed into you every day."

"No, no," Mrs Lenox cried, remorseful now that their talk had drifted
into such intimate personalities. "I am sure, Miss Quincy, nobody feels
that way about a woman that works, except, perhaps, people whose
opinion you can well afford to despise." This was a shaft that struck so
near home that Lena could hardly hold back the tears. "I am sure I think
a thousand times more of a woman who does her honest share than I do of
the helpless ones who lie down on somebody else and whine," Mrs. Lenox
went on.

Madeline was inwardly bemoaning her own lack of tact. She really wanted
to make a friend of this girl, because Dick had asked her to, and here,
at the very beginning, she had stumbled, and all that was meant to show
her regard and sympathy but served to make a gulf between them.

Mrs. Lenox darted a look at her and sprang suddenly to her feet.

"Oh, here's Frank," she exclaimed with an air of relief. "Come in, boy,
and have some tea and fire. It was good of you to come so bright and
early."

"Earlier than bright, I'm afraid," he said.

Lena looked with interest toward the door. Frank Lenox was great in St.
Etienne, first because he was the son-in-law of old Nicholas Windsor, a
potentate of the first local magnitude, and second, because he was