th the fever. She was a
bird--she was. She handed me a line of grand talk, and I,
being sort of weak with sickness, took it in. Well, when she
got right down to business, what did she want me to do? Be a
dressmaker or a lady's maid. Me work twelve, fourteen, God
knows how many hours--be too tired to have any fun--travel
round with dead ones--be a doormat for a lot of cheap people
that are tryin' to make out they ain't human like the rest of
us. _Me!_ And when I said, 'No, thank you,' what do you think?"

"Did she offer to get you a good home in the country?" said Susan.

"That was it. The _country!_ The nerve of her! But I called
her bluff, all right, all right. I says to her, 'Are you
going to the country to live?' And she reared at _me_ daring
to question _her_, and said she wasn't. 'You'd find it dead
slow, wouldn't you?' says I. And she kind o' laughed and
looked almost human. 'Then,' says I, 'no more am I going to the
country. I'll take my chances in little old New York,' I says."

"I should think so!" exclaimed Susan.

"I'd like to be respectable, if I could afford it. But
there's nothing in that game for poor girls unless they
haven't got no looks to sell and have to sell the rest of
themselves for some factory boss to get rich off of while they
get poorer and weaker every day. And when they say 'God' to
me, I say, 'Who's he? He must be somebody that lives up on
Fifth Avenue. We ain't seen him down our way.'"

"I mean, go on the stage," resumed Susan.

"I wouldn't mind, if I could get in right. Everything in this
world depends on getting in right. I was born four flights up
in a tenement, and I've been in wrong ever since."

"I was in wrong from the beginning, too," said Susan,
thoughtfully. "In wrong--that's it exactly." Clara's eyes
again became eager with the hope of a peep into the mystery of
Susan's origin. But Susan went on, "Yes, I've always been in
wrong. Always."

"Oh, no," declared Clara. "You've got education--and
manners--and ladylike instincts. I'm at home here. I was
never so well off in my life. I'm, you might say, on my way
up in the world. Most of us girls are--like the fellow that
ain't got nothing to eat or no place to sleep and gets into
jail--he's better off, ain't he? But you--you don't belong
here at all."

"I belong anywhere--and everywhere--and nowhere," said Susan.
"Yes, I belong here. I've got a chance uptown. If it pans
out, I'll let you