Etta was neither convinced nor abashed. "You don't understand
things in our class," replied she. "Pa says it was the kind of
grateful thinking and talking you've just done that's made him
poor in his old age. He says you've either got to whip or be
whipped, rob or be robbed--and that the really good honest
people are the fools who take the losing side. But he says, too,
he'd rather be a fool and a failure than stoop to stamping on
his fellow-beings and robbing them. And I guess he's
right"--there Etta laughed--"though I'll admit I'd hate to be
tempted with a chance to get up by stepping on somebody." She
sighed. "And sometimes I can't help wishing pa had done some
tramping and stamping. Why not? That's all most people are fit
for--to be tramped and stamped on. Now, don't look so shocked.
You don't understand. Wait till you've been at work a while."

Susan changed the subject. "I'm going to work at seven in the
morning. . . . I might as well have gone today. I had a kind of
an engagement I thought I was going to keep, but I've about
decided I won't."

Etta watched with awe and delight the mysterious look in Susan's
suddenly flushed face and abstracted eyes. After a time she
ventured to interrupt with:

"You'll try living with us?"

"If you're quite sure--did you talk to your mother?"

"Mother'll be crazy about you. She wants anything that'll make
me more contented. Oh, I do get so lonesome!"

Mrs. Brashear, a spare woman, much bent by monotonous
work--which, however, had not bent her courage or her
cheerfulness--made Susan feel at home immediately in the little
flat. The tenement was of rather a superior class. But to Susan
it seemed full of noisome smells, and she was offended by the
halls littered with evidences of the uncleanness of the tenants.
She did not then realize that the apparent superior cleanness
and neatness of the better-off classes was really in large part
only affected, that their secluded back doors and back ways gave
them opportunity to hide their uncivilized habits from the world
that saw only the front. However, once inside the Brashear flat,
she had an instant rise of spirits.

"Isn't this nice?" exclaimed she as Etta showed her, at a glance
from the sitting-room, the five small but scrupulously clean
rooms. "I'll like it here!"

Etta reddened, glanced at her for signs of mockery, saw that she
was in earnest. "I'm afraid it's better to look at than to live
in," sh