She came up one day when Yawkins was coiled over my desk. He crawled away as soon as he saw her, for he hated her. After he went she stood looking down at me and hesitating. It wasn't like her to hesitate about anything. "Look here," she said at last, "I earn a good income by attending to my own business, and I usually let other people's business alone. Besides, I'm not cut out for a Star of Bethlehem. But I just want to tell you not to worry about that kind of thing." She looked after Yawkins, She looked after Yawkins, who had crawled through the door.

I tried to say that I wasn't worrying, but I couldn't, for it wasn't true. And someway, though I didn't know why, I couldn't talk to her about it. She didn't wait for me, however, but went right on.

"You're very young," she said, "and a long way from home. You haven't been in New York long enough to make influential friends or create a background for yourself; so you seem fair game, and the wolves are on the trail. But you can be sure of one thing they'll never get you; so don't worry."

I thanked her, and she patted my shoulder and went away. I wasn't sure just what she meant, but I knew she had tried to be kind.

The day I started down to Wall Street to see the multimillionaires I was very thoughtful. I didn't know then, as I did later, how guarded they were in their offices, and how hard it was for a stranger to get near them. What I simply hated was having them look at me and grin at me, and seeing them under false pretenses and having to tell them lies. I knew Sister Irmingarde would not have approved of it--but there were so many things in newspaper work that Sister Irmingarde wouldn't approve of. I was beginning to wonder if there was anything at all she would approve, and later, of course, I found there was. But I discovered many, many other things long before that.

I went to Mr. Drake's office first. He was the one Mr. Hurd had mentioned first, and while I was at school I had heard about him and read that he was very old and very kind and very pious. I thought perhaps he would be kind enough to see a strange girl for a few minutes and give her some advice, even if his time was worth a thousand dollars a minute, as they said it was. So I went straight to his office and asked for him, and gave my card to a buttoned boy

who seemed strangely loath to take it. He was perfectly sure Mr. Drake hadn't time to see me, and he wanted the whole story of my life before he gave the card to anyone; but I was not yet afraid of office boys, and he finally took the card and went away with dragging steps.

Then my card began to circulate like a love story among the girls at St. Catherine's. Men in little cages and at mahogany desks read it, and stared at me and passed it on to other men. Finally it disappeared in an inner room, and a young man came out holding it in his hand, and spoke to me in a very cold and direct manner. The card had my real name on it, but no address or newspaper, and it didn't mean anything at all to the direct young man. He wanted to know who I was and what I wanted of Mr. Drake, and I told him what Mr. Hurd had told me to say. The young man hesitated. Then he smiled, and at last he said he would see what he could do and walked away. In five or six minutes he came back again, still smiling, but in a pleasanter and more friendly manner, and said Mr. Drake would see me if I could wait half an hour.

I thanked him and settled back in my seat to wait. It was a very comfortable seat a deep, leather-covered chair with big wide arms, and there was enough going on around me to keep me interested. All sorts of men came and went while I sat there; young men and old men, and happy men and wretched men, and prosperous men and poor men; but there was one thing in which they were all alike. Every man was in a hurry, and every man had in his eyes the set, eager look my brother Jack's eyes hold when he is running a college race and sees the goal ahead of him. A few of them glanced at me, but none seemed interested or surprised to see me there. Probably they thought, if they thought of it at all, that I was a stenographer trying to get a situation.

The half-hour passed, and then another half-hour, and at last the direct young man came out again. He did not apologize for keeping me waiting twice as long as he had said it would be.

"Mr. Drake will see you now," he said. I followed him through several offices full of clerks and typewriters, and then into an office where a little old man sat alone. It was a very large office, with old rugs on the floor, and heavy curtains and beautiful

furniture, and the little old man seemed almost lost in it. He was a very thin little old man, and he sat at a great mahogany desk facing the door. The light in his office came from windows behind and beside him, but it fell on my face, as I sat opposite him, and left his in shadow. I could see, though, that his hair was very white, and that his face was like an oval billiard ball, and that the thin skin of it was drawn tightly over bones that showed. He might have been fifty years old or a hundred-I didn't know which but he was dressed very carefully in gray clothes almost as light in color as his face and hair, and he wore a gray tie with a star-sapphire pin in it. That pale blue stone, and the pale blue of his eyes, which had the same sort of odd, moving light in them the sapphire had, were the only colors about him. He sat back very much at his ease, his small figure deep in his great swivelchair, the finger-tips of both hands close together, and stared at me with his pale blue eyes that showed their queer sparks under his white eyebrows.

"Well, young woman," he said, "what can I do for you?"

And then I knew how old he was, for in the tones of his voice the clock of time seemed to be striking eighty. It made me feel comfortable and almost happy to know that he was so old. I wasn't afraid of him any more. I poured out my little story, which I had rehearsed with his clerk, and he listened without a word, never taking his narrow blue eyes from my face. When I stopped he asked me what instrument I was studying, and I told him the piano, which was true enough, for I was still keeping up the music I had worked on so hard with Sister Cecilia ever since I was eight years old. He asked me what music I liked best, and when I told him my favorite composers were Beethoven and Debussy, he smiled and murmured that it was a strange combination. It was, too, and well I knew it. Sister Cecilia said once that it made her understand why I wanted to be both a nun and a newspaper woman.

In a few minutes I was talking to Mr. Drake as easily as I could talk to George Morgan or to my father. He asked who my teachers had been, and I told him all about the convent and my years of study there, and how much better Janet Trelawney played than I did, and how severe Sister Cecilia was with us both, and how much I

liked church music. I was so glad to be telling him the truth that I told him a great deal more than I needed to. I told him almost everything there was to tell, except that I was a newspaper reporter. I remembered not to tell him that.

He seemed to like to hear about school and the girls. Several times he laughed, but very kindly, and with me, you know, not at me. Once he said it had been a long time since any young girl had told him about her school pranks, but he didn't sigh over it or look sentimental, as a man would in a book. He merely mentioned it. We talked and talked. Twice the direct young secretary opened the door and put his head in; but each time he took it out again because nobody seemed to want it to stay there. At last I remembered that Mr. Drake was a busy man, and that his time was worth a thousand dollars a minute, and that I had taken about forty thousand dollars' worth of it already, and so I gasped and apologized and got up. I said I had forgotten all about time, and he said he had, too, and that I must sit down again because we hadn't even touched upon our business talk.

So I sat down again, and he looked at me more closely than ever, as if he had noticed how hot and red my face had suddenly got and couldn't understand why it looked that way. Of course he couldn't, either; for I had just remembered that, though I had been a reporter for a whole week, I had forgotten my assignment! It seemed as if I would never learn to be a real newspaper woman. My heart went way down, and

I

suppose the corners of my mouth did too; they usually went down at the same time. He asked very kindly what was the matter, and the tone of his voice was beautiful— old and friendly, and understanding. I said it was because I was so silly and stupid and young and unbusinesslike. He started to say something and stopped, then sat up and began to talk in a very businesslike way. He asked where my money was, and I told him the name of the bank. He looked at his watch and frowned. I didn't know why; but I thought perhaps it was because he wanted me to take it out of there right away and it was too late. It was almost four o'clock. Then he put the tips of his fingers together again, and talked to me the way the cashier at the bank had when I put my money in.

He said that the savings bank was a good place for a girl's money-under ordinary