Wanning lost
track of time and kept Annie until it grew dark. He knew he had old
McQuiston guessing, but he didn't care. One day the senior partner
came to him with a reproving air.

"I am afraid Miss Doane is leaving us, Paul. She feels that Miss
Wooley's promotion is irregular."

"How is that any business of hers, I'd like to know? She has all my
legal work. She is always disagreeable enough about doing anything
else."

McQuiston's puffy red face went a shade darker.

"Miss Doane has a certain professional pride; a strong feeling for
office organization. She doesn't care to fill an equivocal position.
I don't know that I blame her. She feels that there is something not
quite regular about the confidence you seem to place in this
inexperienced young woman."

Wanning pushed back his chair.

"I don't care a hang about Miss Doane's sense of propriety. I need a
stenographer who will carry out my instructions. I've carried out
Miss Doane's long enough. I've let that schoolma'am hector me for
years. She can go when she pleases."

That night McQuiston wrote to his partner that things were in a bad
way, and they would have to keep an eye on Wanning. He had been seen
at the theatre with his new stenographer.

That was true. Wanning had several times taken Annie to the Palace
on Saturday afternoon. When all his acquaintances were off motoring
or playing golf, when the down-town offices and even the streets
were deserted, it amused him to watch a foolish show with a
delighted, cheerful little person beside him.

Beyond her generosity, Annie had no shining merits of character, but
she had the gift of thinking well of everything, and wishing well.
When she was there Wanning felt as if there were someone who cared
whether this was a good or a bad day with him. Old Sam, too, was
like that. While the old black man put him to bed and made him
comfortable, Wanning could talk to him as he talked to little Annie.
Even if he dwelt upon his illness, in plain terms, in detail, he did
not feel as if he were imposing on them.

People like Sam and Annie admitted misfortune,--admitted it almost
cheerfully. Annie and her family did not consider illness or any of
its hard facts vulgar or indecent. It had its place in their scheme
of life, as it had not in that of Wanning's friends.

Annie came out of a typical poor family of New York. Of eight
children, only four lived to grow up. In such families the stream of
life is broad enough