ce,
behind a typewriter desk near a window where the sun shines in. The
place did not require much concentration--a dentist's office, where her
chief duties consisted of opening the daily budget of circulars, sending
out monthly bills, and telling pained-looking callers that the doctor
was out just then. Her salary just about paid her board, with a dollar
or two left over for headache tablets and a vaudeville show now and
then. She did not need much spending money, for her evenings were spent
mostly in crying over certain small garments and a canton-flannel dog
called "Wooh-wooh."

For three months she stayed, too apathetic to seek a better position.
Then the dentist's creditors became suddenly impatient, and the dentist
could not pay his office rent, much less his office girl. Wherefore
Marie found herself looking for work again, just when spring was opening
all the fruit blossoms and merchants were smilingly telling one another
that business was picking up.

Weinstock-Lubin's big department store gave her desk space in the
mail-order department. Marie's duty it was to open the mail, check up
the orders, and see that enough money was sent, and start the wheels
moving to fill each order--to the satisfaction of the customer if
possible.

At first the work worried her a little. But she became accustomed to
it, and settled into the routine of passing the orders along the proper
channels with as little individual thought given to each one as was
compatible with efficiency. She became acquainted with some of the
girls, and changed to a better boarding house. She still cried over the
wooh-wooh and the little garments, but she did not cry so often, nor did
she buy so many headache tablets. She was learning the futility of grief
and the wisdom of turning her back upon sorrow when she could. The sight
of a two-year-old baby boy would still bring tears to her eyes, and she
could not sit through a picture show that had scenes of children and
happy married couples, but she fought the pain of it as a weakness which
she must overcome. Her Lovin Child was gone; she had given up everything
but the sweet, poignant memory of how pretty he had been and how
endearing.

Then, one morning in early June, her practiced fingers were going
through the pile of mail orders and they singled out one that carried
the postmark of Alpine. Marie bit her lips, but her fingers did not
falter in their task. Cheap table linen, cheap collars, cheap suit