something that sounded like 'Look who's ear,' and then said proudly
to Carlisle:

"What did you wish 'm?"

"Nothing just now, thank you."

The Saleslady gave her a glance of intense disapproval, pushed down her
generous waist-line, arrogantly patted a coal-black transformation, and
wheeled with open indignation.

"That's nice," said Carlisle, to the factory-girl. "Then the presents
come as a surprise to him."

"Surprise--no, ma'am. He don't never know. Take the tags off 'n 'em, and
slip 'em in his drawer, and he'll put 'em on and never notice nor
suspicion, shirts and such. It's like he thought raiment was brought him
by the crows,--like in the Bible, ma'am, y' know?"

There was a brief silence. Carlisle's sheltered life had not too often
touched the simple annals of the poor. She seemed to get a picture....

The little work-girl's face was not coarse, strangely enough, or even
common-looking; it was pleasing in an odd, elfin way. Her white dress
and black jacket were in good taste for her station, without vulgarity.
Such details Carlisle's feminine eye soon gathered in. The touch she
missed was that that cheap dress was an exact copy of one she herself
had worn one Sunday afternoon in May, as near as Kern Garland could
remember it.

"How long were you at the Works?" said the lady suddenly.

"At the Works? More'n three years, ma'am."

There was another silence amid the bustle of the people's emporium.

"Tell me," said Carlisle, with some effort, "do you--did you--looking at
it from a worker's point of view--find it such a very bad place
to work?"

"Oh, _no_, ma'am!" said Kern. "Bad--oh, no! It's--it's fine!"

Carlisle's gaze became wider than the little girl's own. "But--Mr. V.V.
says it's a terrible place...."

"It's only the beautiful way he talks," said Kern, eagerly. "I mean,
he's so, so sorry for the poor.... But lor, ma'am, we know how rich is
rich, and poor poor, and so it must always be this side o' the
pearly gates--"

She stopped short; and then added shyly, with a kind of anxiousness in
her wide dark gaze: "An expression, ma'am--for Heaven. I--I just
learned it."

The lady's look was absent. "Oh!... Where did you learn that?"

"Off Sadie Whirtle, ma'am--a friend of mine." The girl hesitated, and
then said: "That's her now."

And she pointed a small finger at the enormous snapping Saleslady, who
stood glowering and patting her transformation at another customer ten
feet away.

But Car