hem cry: "Yes, but I don't care if old Alfalfa goes on a rampage
twenty-five hours a day. I'm through. Listen, May, say, what d'you know
about me? I'm engaged! No, honest, straight I am! Look at me ring! Aw,
it is not; it's a regular engagement-ring. I'm going to be out of this
hell-hole in two weeks, and Papa Pemberton can work off his temper on
somebody else. Me, I'm going to do a slumber marathon till noon every
day."

"Gee!"

"Engaged!"

--said the other girls, and--

"Engaged! Going to sleep till noon every day. And not see Mr. Ross or
Mr. Pemberton! That's my idea of heaven!" thought Una.

There was a pile of inquiring memoes from Mr. Pemberton and the several
department heads on her desk. As she looked at them Una reached the
point of active protest.

"S. Herbert runs for shelter when the storm breaks, and leaves me here
to stand it. Why isn't _he_ supposed to be here on the job just as much
as I am?" she declaimed. "Why haven't I the nerve to jump up and go out
for a cup of tea the way he would? By jiminy! I will!"

She was afraid of the indefinite menace concealed in all the Pemberton
system as she signaled an elevator. But she did not answer a word when
the hall-attendant said, "You are going out, Miss Golden?"

She went to a German-Jewish bakery and lunch-room, and reflectively got
down thin coffee served in a thick cup, a sugar-warted _Kaffeekuche_,
and two crullers. She was less willing to go back to work than she had
been in her refuge in the wash-room. She felt that she would rather be
dead than return and subject herself to the strain. She was "through,"
like the little engaged girl. She was a "quitter."

For half an hour she remained in the office, but she left promptly at
five-thirty, though her desk was choked with work and though Mr. Ross
telephoned that he would be back before six, which was his chivalrous
way of demanding that she stay till seven.

Mr. Schwirtz was coming to see her that evening. He had suggested
vaudeville.

She dressed very carefully. She did her hair in a new way.

When Mr. Schwirtz came she cried that she _couldn't_ go to a show. She
was "clean played out." She didn't know what she could do. Pemberton's
was too big a threshing-machine for her. She was tired--"absolutely all
in."

"Poor little sister!" he said, and smoothed her hair.

She rested her face on his shoulder. It seemed broad and strong and
protective.

She was glad when he put his arm about her.