Page:Hard-pan; a story of bonanza fortunes (IA hardpanbonanza00bonnrich).pdf/66

54 positions in stores don't get enough to live on. The girl who shampoos my hair has a sister in Abram's, and she gets seven dollars a week, and has to be nicely dressed. Just fancy that!" said Letitia; and then, in a burst of candor: "Why, I never in this world could dress on that alone, even if I gave up silk stockings and always wore alpaca petticoats like the woman who teaches Maud German."

"Nevertheless," said Gault, "it seems to me that a woman who was high-minded and proud and independent would be a shop-girl and live on seven dollars a week rather than—"

He stopped. Letitia looked at him interestedly, struck by something in his tone.

"Rather than what?" she asked.

"Rather than—well, in this story the people who were so poor had friends that were well off, and all that sort of thing, and they borrowed from them, and—I think it 's going to turn out that they lived that way."

"Did the girl borrow? Would n't work and lived on the borrowed money? Oh, that's—!"

Letitia raised both hands in the air and let them drop with a gesture that expressed complete finality of interest and approval.

"What do you mean by 'oh,' Letitia?" he said, rather sharply. "I never said the girl knew anything about it."

"Well, she must have had some curiosity to