After no end of running here and there all over New York, they found just what they wanted in one of the cheaper and more recently developed districts of Harlem.  It was a narrow little store, with a fair-sized show window on Broadway, and with living rooms in the rear.  Fanny declared it was just too cute for anything, and as she was the prime mover in the enterprise, a lease was signed without further delay, and the Blaine family took immediate possession.

At first the girls were as delighted with their new home as are children with a new toy.  It being Summer time, there was no school for Virginia, so she was free to assist in the store.  She dressed the window and waited on the customers, and after a very busy day, which kept her on her feet from morning till night, thought she had never had so much fun in her life.  For the nonce, books and music were forgotten.  She was a smart little saleslady, succeeding in selling one after the other, for ten dollars, hats which had cost Fanny not more than two.  But her cooeperation was not to be for long.  It was quite decided that in the Fall she was to go to High School.  This was her mother’s wish, and it had also been insisted upon by Fanny as a condition of their taking the store.  Virginia, at heart, was glad enough to acquiesce.  As they were too poor to keep a maid, she would willingly have stayed at home and shouldered her share of the daily toil, but an education meant a great deal to her, more than to most girls, and she would have relinquished her schooling only with bitter regret.

Autumn came with its cooler weather and longer evenings, and when High School opened Virginia was sent to resume her studies, while her sister and mother, busy in the store, exerted every effort to keep the little household going.  The younger girl felt keenly the sacrifice they were making for her, and determined to prove worthy of it.  She began to apply herself more energetically than ever.  A clever, brainy girl, she was highly sensitive to every surrounding influence, with ideas and ideals of her own, in full sympathy with the social side of life, yet independent and self-reliant, and just beginning to choose her own path in the bewildering maze of the world’s devious thoroughfare.  In High School she made astonishing progress.  Her fine mentality enabled her to grasp quickly the most obtuse scientific and economic problems, and her natural taste for belles lettres making languages and general literature comparatively easy, she soon distinguished herself above the other girls of her class.  Especial talent she showed for public speaking, having a good command of English, with forcible delivery and sound logic.  So successful, indeed, was she in this respect, that in her final year, as graduation day drew near, she was picked out from among three hundred and fifty girls to deliver the class oration at the graduating exercises.