“I do not consider it exactly healthy down here,” he said, slowly, “but of course you know best, Mr. Day; you have charge of that department.  I should not dream of interfering.  I know you will do your duty.”

“Certainly, certainly,” said Mr. Day, promptly.  He was a short, stout man, and exceedingly curt and pompous.

“I consider it quite healthy enough for our purpose, Mr. Denton; for what do our salespeople know of modern sanitary improvements?”

“That is so,” replied Mr. Denton, with a smile of satisfaction.  “What do they know, indeed?  Why, they are nearly all of them from the garrets of some tenement or other.  They have never been accustomed to anything better, nor perhaps half as comfortable.”

They passed out of the room, leaving Faith almost speechless with horror.

In her whole life she had never dreamed of such cowardly injustice.

“Now you know that I am right, Faith,” Miss Jennings remarked, with a harsh laugh.  “Now you have seen for yourself what we have to expect from our employers.”

“They look on us as a lot of rats from some garret or other,” added the clerk who had spoken so bitterly before.  “But, time’s up; we must go back and take in some more money for the darlings.”

Faith stifled a sob as she took Miss Jennings’ arm and started upstairs.  She was pained and disgusted, but by no means discouraged.

“There must be some way,” she whispered to Miss Jennings.  “It looks very dark, I am willing to admit, but with God all things are possible.  I shall not give up.  There must be some way of bringing the light into this place.  Just now it seems lost in a terrible darkness.”

“If God had wished it to be different He would have changed it long ago,” muttered Miss Jennings.  “But He doesn’t care, Faith.  Don’t tell me that He cares!  Why, I am dying, dying, yet He cares nothing about it!”

She broke out into such a terrible fit of coughing that she had to stop on the stairs.  Faith kept her arm about her until the spell was over.

When they reached the floor they were two minutes late.

Miss Fairbanks met them and scolded them both severely.

Faith noticed that Miss Jennings did not offer to explain the delay.  She would have explained it herself if her companion had not stopped her in a whisper.

“It’s no use, Faith; she won’t believe it, or, if she did, she’d say I had no right to cough.  Poor devil!  She treats the people under her just as Forbes treats her.  They are a lot of slave drivers and slaves together!”

Faith crawled up to her desk feeling sick at heart.  She was overwhelmed with the knowledge of evil which was being forced upon her.

During the afternoon she found time to write a few words on a bit of paper and slip it into Miss Jennings’ hand without the buyer seeing her.

“Dear Mary,” she wrote, “don’t give up in despair.  I am sure that Mr. Denton is a good man, only weak and indifferent.  I shall pray to-night that God will open his eyes—­then to-morrow I shall try personally to talk to him, for I believe that prayer and effort should always go together.  Who knows but that I may be able to brighten things a little?  It certainly is worth trying for—­to bring the light into dark places.”