Her discharge already?  What could she have done to be sent off at the end of a week—­she who had tried so hard?  And how strange that, tired and disheartened as she was, she should actually fear discharge!  A minute ago she had been asking herself, “How many weeks like this can I live through?” and wishing that an end, almost any end, might come.  Yet here she was dreading to turn the slip over (she had retrieved it blank side up) and read her doom.

“You are requested to call at the superintendent’s private office Monday, twelve forty-five,” was neatly typewritten precisely in the middle of the paper.

Win did not know whether to be relieved or alarmed.

“I’ll ask Sadie what she thinks,” was her quick decision.  But Sadie was not available this evening.  An “old chum” had asked Miss Kirk out to supper, and Miss Child having snubbed her faithful lion man for reasons which had appeared good at the time, had no one to give her the key to those dozen mystic words which might as well have been written in cipher.

“And even Sadie can’t tell for certain,” she reflected.  “I can’t possibly know till Monday noon.”

All the fatigue and nerve strain of six dreadful days and six appalling nights seemed suddenly to culminate in a fit of overpowering restlessness.  Worn out though she was (or all the more because of that, perhaps) she could not go “home” to Columbus Avenue, where the “L” that Sadie said should be spelled with an “H” ran past her window.

She was sure if she sat down or went to bed she should think more about her aching back and burning feet than if she walked.  She longed for the sweet, kind air of heaven to ripple past her hot cheeks like cool water.  She longed for stars to look up to, and for the purple peace and silence of night after the clamour of the store and before the babel of Columbus Avenue, into which presently she must plunge.

“I’ll walk in the park,” she proposed to herself.  “It will do me good.  When I’m too tired, I can rest for a few minutes on one of the seats and hear myself think.”

That was one of the many disadvantages of “home.”  There you could hear at the same time almost every other sound which could be produced in the world, but you could not hear yourself think.

Earl Usher was not to be seen as she came out into the street, and Win was glad.  Once or twice to-day she had half repented the snub which, perhaps, he had not meant to deserve, but now she thanked it for his absence.  Swiftly she walked away, though still with the just perceptible limp that most shop girls have in their first few weeks of “business.”

She did not look up at the giant Hands with their blazing rings, as she had looked at first, half admiring, half awed.  Their gesture now seemed greedy.  They were trying to “grab the whole sky,” as the lion tamer said.  Rather would one hurry to escape from under them, and go where the Hands of Peter Rolls could not reach.