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 to his duties—which he accepted as a most sobering responsibility—and his engaging gentleness with the public, were qualifications for office that easily outweighed his defects.

He was to find it his good fortune that he was required to be merely an automaton in his work. Shut in behind the brass rods of his window and the wire screen of his locked door, he was to see the public go past in a procession of speaking heads and open hands that asked and were answered, gave, received and disappeared. There was to be something pleasant to him in the fact that although he could hear the slightest whisper of the purchaser at the open window, he had to raise his own voice to make himself heard in reply; that he could speak in an amused aside to Pittsey without being overheard by the expectant head at the wicket; and that the office, glowing with light and warmth, was as comfortable as home to him, while all the rest of the world seemed to be coming, like hungry street-children to a bake-shop window, to stare in at him from the cold darkness, red-nosed and with numb hands.

But these impressions were still in the future; for the present he was busy arranging the office to Pittsey's taste, with some of the glad anticipations of a young housewife moving into a new home. Miss Morris looked in on them for a moment, on her way from rehearsals, but she understood from Pittsey's manner that the ticket office was not to be used for social calls, and she withdrew as soon as possible. "Let me come and see you," Don proposed, as she went. "But I'm rehearsing morning, noon and night,"