Cally moved in her destined orbit.  From shop to shop, she pleasurably pursued the material.  Nevertheless, she cogitated problems as she bought; chiefly with reference to Hugo, and the two or three hours’ tete-a-tete that waited just ahead....  At just what point should the needs of discipline be regarded as satisfied?  That was the question, as she had remarked last night.

At Baird & Himmel’s these knotty reflections were interrupted for a space.  In this spreading mart Cally chanced to fall in with an acquaintance.

Baird & Himmel’s was the great popular department store of the town, just now rapidly flowing over its whole block, and building all around the usual drug-store which declined to sell.  Here rich and poor rubbed elbows with something like that human equality so lauded by Mr. V.V. and others.  And here Cally had pushed her way to Gentlemen’s Furnishings, her purpose being to buy two shirts for James Thompson, Jr., neck size 13, and not to cost over one dollar each, as mamma had duly noted on the memorandum.

It was ten minutes to four o’clock, as a glance at her watch now showed.  Cally swung a little on her circular seat, and encountered the full stare of a girl of the lower orders, seated next her.  Her own glance, which had been casual, suddenly became intent:  the girl’s face, an unusual one in its way, touched a chord somewhere.  In a second Cally remembered the little factory hand who had brought her the note from Dr. Vivian, that fateful Sunday afternoon in May ...

The little creature bobbed her head at her, with the beginnings of an eager smile, which did not change her wide fixed stare.

“Good evenin’, ma’am—­Miss Heth.”

“Good afternoon ...”

No more talk there had been about the Works at home, other than as to papa’s plan to have Mr. and Mrs. O’Neill to dinner, to talk over matters in a friendly way.  But if Cally had desired a sign of how much this subject had been on her mind since her talk with Vivian she could have found it in the mingling sensations that rose in her now.  For this little apparition at her elbow—­so she had learned incidentally through Hen Cooney, who knew everything—­was the connecting link in the whole argument.  Here, on the next seat, sat that “strong necessity” which had impelled Vivian to attack Mr. Heth in the papers.

“I remember you,” said Carlisle, slowly.  “I understood from Miss Cooney that you had been very sick.  You don’t look sick—­especially.”

“I been away, ma’am.  On a Trip,” explained the pale operative with a kind of eagerness.  “Dr. Vivian he sent me off to Atlantic City, in New Jersey, and then to a hotel in the Adriondacts.  I conv’lessed, ma’am, y’know?”

“I see.  Now you are going back to the Works, I suppose?”

It was not a question easy to answer with delicacy, to answer and avoid all risk of hurting a lady’s feelings.  How explain that the Works were expressly prohibited by doctor’s orders, though you yourself knew that you ought to go back?  How tell of special lessons at a Writing Desk every night, such as prepared people to be Authors, when anybody could see by looking at you that you were only a work-girl, and you yourself felt that it was all wrong someway?...