lish repose of her bearing even more than misplaced
cordiality. She always returned the salutations of Miss Wakefield, but
in a tone so neutral, cool, and cucumberish that she hoped the girl
would feel rebuked and learn a little more diffidence, or at least
learn that the Drupes did not care for her acquaintance. But the only
result of such treatment was that Miss Wakefield would say to the clerk
in the office: "Your Eastern people have such stiff ways that they
make me homesick. But they don't mean any harm, I suppose."

Some of the families in the Giralda rather liked the new cashier; these
were they who had children. The little children chatted and laughed
with her across her desk when they came down as forerunners to give the
order for the family dinner. If it were only lunch time, when few
people were in the restaurant, they went behind the desk and embraced
the cashier and had a romp with her. The smallest chaps she would take
up in her arms while she pulled out the drawers to show them her paper
knife and trinkets; and when there were flowers, she would often break
off one apiece for even those least amiable little plagues that in an
apartment house are the torment of their nurses and their mammas the
livelong day. This not only gave pleasure to the infantry, but relieved
an aching which the poor girl had for a once cheerful home, now broken
up by the death of her parents and the scattering abroad of brothers
and sisters.

The young men in the house thought her "a jolly girl," since she would
chat with them over her desk as freely as she would have chatted across
the counter with the clerks in Cedar Falls, where she came from. She
was equally cordial with the head waiter, and with those of his staff
who knew any more English than was indispensable to the taking of an
order. But her frank familiarity with young gentlemen and friendly
speech with servants were offensive to some of the ladies. They talked
it over, and decided that Miss Wakefield was not a modest girl; that at
least she did not know her place, and that the manager ought to dismiss
her if he meant to maintain the tone of the house. The manager--poor
fellow!--had to hold his own place against the rivalry of the
treasurer, and when such complaints were made to him what could he do?
He stood out a while for Miss Wakefield, whom he liked; but when the
influential Mrs. Drupe wrote to him that the cashier at the desk in the
restaurant was not a well-behave