For a few moments the girl had a hard struggle to control her rising sobs, but happily no one saw her working face and twitching lips, for her companion had planted herself like a great bulwark between her and the world, shutting her off, walling her ’round.  Then, suddenly, she found herself placed in a hurriedly vacated seat, from which she could look up into the benevolent face inclined toward her, and say, without too much danger of breaking down in the effort: 

“I really did have it—­the money, you know.  Truly, I’m not a—­”

“O, pooh!  Don’t you worry your head over a little thing like that.  Such accidents is liable to occur in the best-reggerlated fam’lies.  They do in mine, shoor!”

“But, you see,” quavered the uncertain voice, “I haven’t any more.  That’s all I had, so I can’t pay you back, and—­”

It was curious, but just here another passenger hastily rose, vacating the seat next Claire’s, and leaving it free, whereat her companion compressed her bulky frame into it with a sigh, as of well-earned rest, and remarked comfortably, “Now we can talk.  You was sayin’—­what was it?  About that change, you know.  It was all you had.  You mean by you, of course.”

Claire’s pale, pinched face flushed hotly.  “No, I don’t,” she confessed, without lifting her downcast eyes.

Her companion appeared to ponder this for a moment, then quite abruptly she let it drop.

“My name’s Slawson,” she observed.  “Martha Slawson.  I go out by the day.  Laundry-work, housecleaning, general chores.  I got a husband an’ four children, to say nothing of a mother-in-law who lives with us, an’ keeps an eye on things while me an’ Sammy (that’s Mr. Slawson) is out workin’, an’ lucky if it’s an eye itself, for it’s not a hand, I can tell you that.  What’s your name, if I may make so bold?”

“Claire Lang.  My people live in Grand Rapids—­where the furniture and carpet-sweepers come from,” with a wistful, faint little attempt at a smile.  “My father was judge of the Supreme Court, but he had losses, and then he died, and there wasn’t much of anything left, and so—­”

“You come to New York to make your everlastin’ fortune, an’ you—­”

Claire Lang shook her head, completing the unfinished sentence.  “No, I haven’t made it, that is, not yet.  But I’m not discouraged.  I don’t mean to give up.  Things look pretty dark just now, but I’m not going to let that discourage me—­No, indeed!  I’m going to be brave and courageous, and never say die, even if—­even if—­”

“Turn ‘round, an’ pertend you’re lookin’ out of the winder,” suggested Mrs. Slawson confidentially.  “The way folks stare, you’d think the world was full of nothin’ but laughin’ hyeenyas.  Dontcher care, my dear!  Well for some of ’em, if they could shed an honest tear or two themselves, oncet in a while, instead of bein’ that brazen; ’twouldn’t be water at all, but Putzes Pomady it’d take