ountered the full
stare of a girl of the lower orders, seated next her. Her own glance,
which had been casual, suddenly became intent: the girl's face, an
unusual one in its way, touched a chord somewhere. In a second Cally
remembered the little factory hand who had brought her the note from Dr.
Vivian, that fateful Sunday afternoon in May ...

The little creature bobbed her head at her, with the beginnings of an
eager smile, which did not change her wide fixed stare.

"Good evenin', ma'am--Miss Heth."

"Good afternoon ..."

No more talk there had been about the Works at home, other than as to
papa's plan to have Mr. and Mrs. O'Neill to dinner, to talk over matters
in a friendly way. But if Cally had desired a sign of how much this
subject had been on her mind since her talk with Vivian she could have
found it in the mingling sensations that rose in her now. For this
little apparition at her elbow--so she had learned incidentally through
Hen Cooney, who knew everything--was the connecting link in the whole
argument. Here, on the next seat, sat that "strong necessity" which had
impelled Vivian to attack Mr. Heth in the papers.

"I remember you," said Carlisle, slowly. "I understood from Miss Cooney
that you had been very sick. You don't look sick--especially."

"I been away, ma'am. On a Trip," explained the pale operative with a
kind of eagerness. "Dr. Vivian he sent me off to Atlantic City, in New
Jersey, and then to a hotel in the Adriondacts. I conv'lessed,
ma'am, y'know?"

"I see. Now you are going back to the Works, I suppose?"

It was not a question easy to answer with delicacy, to answer and avoid
all risk of hurting a lady's feelings. How explain that the Works were
expressly prohibited by doctor's orders, though you yourself knew that
you ought to go back? How tell of special lessons at a Writing Desk
every night, such as prepared people to be Authors, when anybody could
see by looking at you that you were only a work-girl, and you yourself
felt that it was all wrong someway?...

Kern spoke timidly, though her wide eyes did not falter.

"Well--not just to-reckly, ma'am. The plan was, till I got my strength
back, that I might lay off a little and go--go to School."

"I see."

The tone was cool, and the girl added with a little gasp:

"And then go back to bunchin' again,--yes, ma'am. It's--it's my
trade...."

Many feelings moved in Cally, and it might be that the best of them were
not uppermost.