like to earn money," she said. "I'd like to work."

"Well, why don't you?" demanded Lily.

"Work's all the style this year. They're all doing it. Look at the
Vanderbilts and that Morgan girl, and the whole crowd. These days you
can't tell whether the girl at the machine next to you lives in the
Bronx or on Fifth Avenue."

"It must be wonderful to earn your own clothes."

"Believe me," laughed Lily Bernstein, "it ain't so wonderful when
you've had to do it all your life."

She studied the pale girl before her with brows thoughtfully knit.
Lily had met too many uplifters to be in awe of them. Besides, a
certain warm-hearted friendliness was hers for every one she met. So,
like the child she was, she spoke what was in her mind:

"Say, listen, dearie. I wouldn't wear black if I was you. And that
plain stuff--it don't suit you. I'm like that, too. There's some
things I can wear and others I look fierce in. I'd like you in one of
them big flat hats and a full skirt like you see in the ads, with lots
of ribbons and tag ends and bows on it. D'you know what I mean?"

"My mother was a Van Cleve," said Gladys drearily, as though that
explained everything. So it might have, to any but a Lily Bernstein.

Lily didn't know what a Van Cleve was, but she sensed it as a drawback.

"Don't you care. Everybody's folks have got something the matter with
'em. Especially when you're a girl. But if I was you, I'd go right
ahead and do what I wanted to."

In the doorway at the far end of the shop appeared Emma with her two
visitors. Mrs. Orton-Wells stopped and said something to a girl at a
machine, and her very posture and smile reeked of an offensive
kindliness, a condescending patronage.

Gladys Orton-Wells did a strange thing. She saw her mother coming
toward her. She put one hand on Lily Bernstein's arm and she spoke
hurriedly and in a little gasping voice.

"Listen! Would you--would you marry a man who hadn't any money to
speak of, and no sort of family, if you loved him, even if your mother
wouldn't--wouldn't----"

"Would I! Say, you go out to-morrow morning and buy yourself one of
them floppy hats and a lace waist over flesh-colored chiffon and get
married in it. Don't get it white, with your coloring. Get it kind of
cream. You're so grand and thin, this year's things will look lovely
on you."

A bell shrilled somewhere in the shop. A hundred machines stopped
their whirring. A hundred heads came u