Page:The fifth wheel (1916).djvu/205

Rh I was sitting with the rest of my unemployed sisters in the little inner room provided for us off the main office, when I glanced through the door to see Henrietta Morgan and her mother. I looked hastily away. Here I had been avoiding Fifth Avenue and the region of shops, for fear some of my old friends about New York (and I have many) might run across me, and stupidly I had walked into the very place infested by them. I accomplished my escape easily enough. Naturally Mrs. Morgan wasn't looking for me in such a place, but I didn't take the chance again.

I was lonely and discouraged many times during that first bitter summer of mine in New York. I felt no charity for Edith, no forgiveness for Tom. I hadn't wanted to leave home—not really—I hadn't sought an experience like this. They had forced me to it. If only Tom hadn't treated me like a naughty child! If only Bob—oh if only Bob—(no, there were some things I could not dwell upon. It was wiser not to). Some pains are dull and steady. One can endure them and smile. Others recur at intervals, occasioned by some unimportant detail like a man on the street selling roasted chestnuts, which reminds one of saffron woods in late October. Such pain is like the stab of a sharp stiletto.

Mine is the same old story of hope and despair, of periods of courage occasioned by opportunities that flickered for a while and went out. I was not utterly without employment. The first three dollars I earned at directing envelopes in a department store made me