that
the big stores would soon seek additional help. The winter had come
again, and with it a bad cough which, perforce, she neglected. One day
she could not rise from her bed and the woman who rented a room to her
called in the nearest doctor who, after a look at the patient and a
swift, understanding gaze at the surroundings, ordered immediate
removal to the hospital.

So now she was out of the precincts of suffering again, but the world
had become a very hard place, an evil thing that grasped bodies and
souls and churned them into a struggling, crying, weeping mass for
which nothing but despair loomed ahead. She would try again, however.
She would finish wearing out the soles of her poor little boots in a
further hunt for work. At last sleep came to her, and the next morning
she awoke feeling hungry, and perhaps a bit stronger. Some sort of
sunlight was making its way through the murky air. She breakfasted on
a half-bottle of milk and a couple of rolls and went out again,
hollow-eyed, weary looking, to look for more work.

For the best part of three days she staggered about the streets of the
big city, answering advertisements found in a penny paper, looking up
the signs calling for help, that were liberally enough displayed in
the manufacturing district.

Then, one afternoon, she sank down upon a bench in one of the smaller
parks, utterly weary and exhausted. Beside her, on the seat, lay a
paper which she picked up, hoping to find more calls for willing
workers. But despair was clutching at her heart. In most of the places
they had looked at her and shaken their heads. No! They had just found
the help they wanted. The reason of her disappointments, she realized,
lay in the fact that she looked so ill and weary. They did not deem
her capable of doing the needed work, in spite of her assurances.

So she held up the paper and turned over one or two pages, seeking the
title. It was the _Matrimonial Journal_! It seemed like a scurrilous
joke on the part of fate. What had she to do with matrimony; with
hopes for a happy, contented home and surcease of the never-ending
search for the pittance that might keep her alive? She hardly knew why
she folded it and ran the end into the poor little worn plush muff she
carried. When she reached her room again she lighted the lamp and
looked it over. It was merely something with which to pass a few
minutes of the long hours. She read some of those advertisements and
the keen inst