onscious of an odd little shock, almost like a physical
impact.... Why was it that this impossible man, with his ridiculous
opinions, his wicked untruths, and his face so full of a misplaced
hopefulness, kept coming like a destiny across and across her path? What
was her silly weakness, that he never looked at her with those quite
misrepresentative eyes without making her angry and unhappy?...

She felt herself, as it were, turning pale inside, but into her cheeks
there sprang a cold color.

"You wished to see me?"

"Well, do put on your hat, V.V.," interjected Hen, matter of fact, but
glancing round at Cally's voice. "You'll catch pneumonia...."

"Yes--thank you.... I'd like to enlist your help, if I could, Miss Heth.
I've just come from the Works, you see," he hurried on with curious
intensity--"where I went to try to right what seems to be a clear
injustice. I wonder--do you remember the girl I happened to mention to
you at my uncle's that night,--a buncher here at the Works?..."

His expression said that he was counting on her remembering. The girl in
the car was looking him through and through. Hen Cooney disappeared from
between them; the roar of traffic faded away.

"No, I don't remember," said Miss Heth, biting her lip a little.

"Oh!--the girl I wanted the _matrons_ for? Well, it's no matter," the
tall young man said, with a belying look of youthful disappointment. But
he went on with undiminished eagerness: "She's one of the best
operatives in the Works, I assure you--a really valuable employee
because she can get more work out of a machine than any two
inexperienced girls. She's had over two years' practice, you see. This
morning she reported again for work after nearly a month's illness in
bed: she's had pleurisy. Well, MacQueen--the superintendent--declines to
give her her place back."

"Why, what a shabby trick!" cried Hen....

She looked as if she desired to say much more, but she saw that V.V.'s
eyes were fixed on Cally, whose father owned MacQueen, and forbore.

Cally's breast rose and fell. She saw what was coming now.... How did he
dare--he who had so maligned her personally, who had so maliciously
thrown bricks at papa and the Works--how did he dare to turn and beg
favors from the objects of his slanders? This was the supreme
impertinence. Now she would say to him what would destroy him from her
ways forever....

V. Vivian was hurrying on, as if perceiving that he hadn't made the
matter