er name is. She and I
learnt our typewriting together and started in the same office. We stood
it, somehow, for three years, sometimes office work, sometimes at home.
We didn't have much luck. It was always better for me than for Stella,
because she was good-looking, and I'm not."

"I shouldn't say that," he remonstrated. "You've got beautiful eyes, you
know."

"You stop it!" she warned him firmly. "My eyes are my own, and I'll
trouble you not to make remarks about them."

"Sorry," Philip murmured, duly crushed.

"The men were after her all the time," the girl continued, reminiscently.
"Last place we were at, a dry goods store not far from here, the heads of
the departments used to make her life fairly miserable. She held out,
though, but what with fines, and one thing or another, they forced her to
leave. So I did the same. We drifted apart then for a while. She got a
job at an automobile place, and I was working at home. I remember the
night she came to me--I was all alone. Pop had got a three-line part
somewhere and was bragging about it at all the bars in Broadway. Stella
came in quite suddenly and almost out of breath.

"'Kid,' she said, 'I'm through with it.'

"'What do you mean?' I asked her.

"Then she threw herself down on the sofa and she sobbed--I never heard a
girl cry like that in all my life. She shrieked, she was pretty nearly in
hysterics, and I couldn't get a word out of her. When she was through at
last, she was all limp and white. She wouldn't tell me anything. She
simply sat and looked at the stove. Presently she got up to go. I put my
hands on her shoulders and I forced her back in the chair.

"'You've got to tell me all about it, Stella,' I insisted.

"And then of course I heard the whole story. She'd got fired again. These
men are devils!"

"Don't tell me more about it unless you like," he begged sympathetically.
"Where is she now?"

"In the chorus of 'Three Frivolous Maids.' She comes in here regularly."

"Sorry for herself?"

"Not she! Last time I saw her she told me she wouldn't go back into an
office, or take on typewriting again, for anything in the world. She was
looking prettier than ever, too. There's a swell chap almost crazy about
her. Shouldn't wonder if she hasn't got an automobile."

"Well, she answers our question one way, then," he remarked thoughtfully.
"Tell me, Miss Grimes, is everything to eat in America as good as this
fish?"

"Some cooking here," she observe