Presently Sallie looked up, and continued:  “Up to that time, Mr. Snipe hadn’t said anything to me, except that he admired me very much, and that I was pretty, too pretty to work so hard, and that I ought to live like a lady, and a good deal more of that kind of talk that I was silly enough to listen to; but when he found Jim was gone, first, he made fun of him for ’being such a great fool as to go and be shot at for nothing,’ and then he—­O Miss Ercildoune, I can’t tell you what he said; it makes me choke just to think of it.  How dared he? what had I done that he should believe me such a thing as that?  I don’t know what words I used when I did find them, and I don’t care, but they must have stung.  I can’t tell you how he looked, but it was dreadful; and he said, ’I’ll bring down that proud spirit of yours yet, my lady.  I’m not through with you,—­don’t think it,—­not by a good deal’; and then he made me a fine bow, and laughed, and went out of the room.

“The next day Mr. Dodd—­that’s one of our firm—­gave me a week’s notice to quit:  ‘work was slack,’ he said, ’and they didn’t want so many girls.’  But I’m just as sure as sure can be that Mr. Snipe’s at the bottom of it, for I’ve been at the store, as I told you, four years and more, and they always reckoned me one of their best hands, and Mr. Dodd and Mr. Snipe are great friends.  Since then I’ve done nothing but try to get work.  I must have been into a thousand stores, but it’s true work is slack; there’s not a thing been doing since the war commenced, and I can’t get any place.  I’ve been to Miss Russell and some of the ladies who used to come to the store, to see if they’d give me some fine sewing; but they hadn’t any for me, and I don’t know what in the world to do, for I understand nothing very well but to sew, and to stand in a store.  I’ve spent all my money, what little I had, and—­and—­I’ve even sold some of my clothes, and I can’t go on this way much longer.  I haven’t a relative in the world; nor a home, except in a boarding-house; and the girls I know all treat me cool, as though I had done something bad, because I’ve lost my place, I suppose, and am poor.

“All along, at times, Mr. Snipe has been sending me things,—­bouquets, and baskets of fruit, and sometimes a note, and, though I won’t speak to him when I meet him on the street, he always smiles and bows as if he were intimate; and last night, when I was coming home, tired enough from my long search, he passed me and said, with such a look, ’You’ve gone down a peg or two, haven’t you, Sallie?  Come, I guess we’ll be friends again before long.’  You think it’s queer I’m telling you all this.  I can’t help it; there’s something about you that draws it all out of me.  I came to ask you for work, and here I’ve been talking all this while about myself.  You must excuse me; I don’t think I would have said so much, if you hadn’t looked so kind and so interested”; and so she had,—­kind as kind could be, and interested as though the girl who talked had been her own sister.