ally EARNS as much as twenty dollars a week, but I'll try to be! I'm
twenty-eight years old, and I've been waiting all my life for this
chance!"

"Well, even at that age, you may have a year or two of usefulness left,
if your health is spared you." the editor said. They parted laughing,
and Martie went out into the wonderful, sunny, hospitable city as gay
as Teddy was. Oh, how she would work, how she would work! She would get
down to the office first of all; she would wear the trimmest suits; she
would never be cross, never be tired, never rebel at the most flagrant
imposition! She would take the cold baths and wear the winter underwear
that kept tonsilitis at bay; she would hire a typewriter, and keep on
with her articles. If ever a woman in the world kept a position, then
Martie would keep hers!

And, of course, women did. There was that pretty, capable woman who
came into Mr. Trowbridge's office, and was introduced as the assistant
editor. Coolly dressed, dainty and calm, she had not suggested that the
struggle was too hard. She had smilingly greeted Martie, offered a
low-voiced suggestion, and vanished unruffled and at peace.

"Why, that's what this world IS," Martie reflected. "Workers needing
jobs, and jobs needing workers." And suddenly she hit upon the keynote
to her new philosophy. "MEN don't worry and fidget about keeping their
jobs, and _I_'M not going to. I'm just as necessary and just as capable
as if I were--say, Len. If Len came on here for a job I wouldn't worry
myself sick about his ever getting it!"

What honeymoon would have been half so thrilling, she reflected, as
this business of getting herself and Teddy suitably established? Her
choice, not made until Sunday afternoon, fell upon a quiet
boarding-house on West Sixty-first Street. It was kept by a kindly
Irishwoman who had children younger and older than Teddy, and
well-disposed toward Teddy, and it was only half a block from the Park.
At first Mrs. Gilfogle said she would charge nothing at all for the
child; a final price for the two was placed at fifteen dollars a week.
Martie suspected that the young Gilfogles would accompany Teddy and
herself on their jaunts occasionally, and would help him scatter his
stone blocks all over her floor on winter nights. But the luncheon for
which they stayed was exceptionally good, and she was delighted with
her big back room.

"I'm alone wid the two of thim to raise," said Mrs. Gilfogle. "I know
what it is