Mr. Ramsay was the head clerk; and as far as I am concerned I am for him.  He never pinched the girls’ arms when he passed them in dark corners of the store; and when he told them stories when business was dull and the girls giggled and said:  “Oh, pshaw!” it wasn’t G. Bernard they meant at all.  Besides being a gentleman, Mr. Ramsay was queer and original in other ways.  He was a health crank, and believed that people should never eat anything that was good for them.  He was violently opposed to anybody being comfortable, and coming in out of snow storms, or wearing overshoes, or taking medicine, or coddling themselves in any way.  Every one of the ten girls in the store had little pork-chop-and-fried-onion dreams every night of becoming Mrs. Ramsay.  For, next year old Bachman was going to take him in for a partner.  And each one of them knew that if she should catch him she would knock those cranky health notions of his sky high before the wedding cake indigestion was over.

Mr. Ramsay was master of ceremonies at the dinners.  Always they had two Italians in to play a violin and harp and had a little dance in the store.

And here were two dresses being conceived to charm Ramsay—­one purple and the other red.  Of course, the other eight girls were going to have dresses too, but they didn’t count.  Very likely they’d wear some shirt-waist-and-black-skirt-affairs—­nothing as resplendent as purple or red.

Grace had saved her money, too.  She was going to buy her dress ready-made.  Oh, what’s the use of bothering with a tailor—­when you’ve got a figger it’s easy to get a fit—­the ready-made are intended for a perfect figger—­except I have to have ’em all taken in at the waist—­the average figger is so large waisted.

The night before Thanksgiving came.  Maida hurried home, keen and bright with the thoughts of the blessed morrow.  Her thoughts were of purple, but they were white themselves—­the joyous enthusiasm of the young for the pleasures that youth must have or wither.  She knew purple would become her, and—­for the thousandth time she tried to assure herself that it was purple Mr. Ramsay said he liked and not red.  She was going home first to get the $4 wrapped in a piece of tissue paper in the bottom drawer of her dresser, and then she was going to pay Schlegel and take the dress home herself.

Grace lived in the same house.  She occupied the hall room above Maida’s.

At home Maida found clamor and confusion.  The landlady’s tongue clattering sourly in the halls like a churn dasher dabbing in buttermilk.  And then Grace come down to her room crying with eyes as red as any dress.

“She says I’ve got to get out,” said Grace.  “The old beast.  Because I owe her $4.  She’s put my trunk in the hall and locked the door.  I can’t go anywhere else.  I haven’t got a cent of money.”

“You had some yesterday,” said Maida.

“I paid it on my dress,” said Grace.  “I thought she’d wait till next week for the rent.”