Knowles, and sordid stories, and comic too;
she knew how to deal with terror, and shame, and stubborn silence, and
hopeless misery. Gray-haired and motherly? Not at all. An astonishingly
young, pleasingly plumpish woman, with nothing remarkable about her
except a certain splendid calm. Four years out of Vassar, and already
she had learned that if you fold your hands in your lap and wait,
quietly, asking no questions, almost any one will tell you almost
anything.

"Hello!" called Fanny. "How are our morals this morning?"

"Going up!" answered Esther Knowles, "considering that it's Tuesday.
Come in. How's the infant prodigy, I lunched with Ella Monahan, and she
told me your first New York trip was a whirlwind. Congratulations!"

"Thanks. I can't stop. I haven't touched my desk to-day. I just want
to ask you if you know the name of that girl who has charge of the main
chute in the merchandise building."

"Good Lord, child! There are thousands of girls."

"But this one's rather special. She is awfully pretty, and rather
different looking. Exquisite coloring, a discontented expression, and a
blouse that's too low in the neck."

"Which might be a description of Fanny Brandeis herself, barring the
blouse," laughed Mrs. Knowles. Then, at the startled look in Fanny's
face, "Do forgive me. And don't look so horrified. I think I know which
one you mean. Her name is Sarah Sapinsky--yes, isn't it a pity!--and
it's queer that you should ask me about her because I've been having
trouble with that particular girl."

"Trouble?"

"She knows she's pretty, and she knows she's different, and she knows
she's handicapped, and that accounts for the discontented expression.
That, and some other things. She gets seven a week here, and they take
just about all of it at home. She says she's sick of it. She has left
home twice. I don't blame the child, but I've always managed to bring
her back. Some day there'll be a third time--and I'm afraid of it. She's
not bad. She's really rather splendid, and she has a certain dreadful
philosophy of her own. Her theory is that there are only two kinds of
people in the world. Those that give, and those that take. And she's
tired of giving. Sarah didn't put it just that way; but you know what
she means, don't you?"

"I know what she means," said Fanny, grimly.

So it was Sarah she saw above all else in her trip through the gigantic
plant; Sarah's face shone out from among the thousands; the thud-th