"I don't seem to know how to thank you," began Ted, a little husky as to
voice.

"Call around to-morrow morning," interrupted Jo Haley, briskly, "and
Minnie Wenzel will show you the ropes. You and her can work together for
a couple of months. After then she's leaving to make her underwear, and
that. I should think she'd have a bale of it by this time. Been
embroidering them shimmy things and lunch cloths back of the desk when
she thought I wasn't lookin' for the last six months."

Ted came down next morning at 8 A.M. with his nerve between his teeth and
the chip still balanced lightly on his shoulder. Five minutes later
Minnie Wenzel knocked it off. When Jo Haley introduced the two
jocularly, knowing that they had originally met in the First Reader room,
Miss Wenzel acknowledged the introduction icily by lifting her left
eyebrow slightly and drawing down the corners of her mouth. Her air of
hauteur was a triumph, considering that she was handicapped by black
sateen sleevelets.

I wonder how one could best describe Miss Wenzel? There is one of her in
every small town. Let me think (business of hand on brow). Well, she
always paid eight dollars for her corsets when most girls in a similar
position got theirs for fifty-nine cents in the basement. Nature had
been kind to her. The hair that had been a muddy brown in Minnie's
schoolgirl days it had touched with a magic red-gold wand. Birdie
Callahan always said that Minnie was working only to wear out her old
clothes.

After the introduction Miss Wenzel followed Jo Haley into the lobby. She
took no pains to lower her voice.

"Well I must say, Mr. Haley, you've got a fine nerve! If my gentleman
friend was to hear of my working with an ex-con I wouldn't be surprised
if he'd break off the engagement. I should think you'd have some respect
for the feelings of a lady with a name to keep up, and engaged to a swell
fellow like Mr. Schwartz."

"Say, listen, m' girl," replied Jo Haley. "The law don't cover all the
tricks. But if stuffing an order was a criminal offense I'll bet your
swell traveling man would be doing a life term."

Ted worked that day with his teeth set so that his jaws ached next
morning. Minnie Wenzel spoke to him only when necessary and then in
terms of dollars and cents. When dinner time came she divested herself
of the black sateen sleevelets, wriggled from the shoulders down a la
Patricia O'Brien, produced a chamois skin, and disappea