As one long, exceedingly busy and weary day was drawing to a close, however, she received a sharp reprimand.  A gentleman had agreed to meet his wife at the shop as he came up town, in order that they might together make provision for Christmas.  The lady having nearly accomplished her round, and having proved herself a liberal purchaser, she was naturally accompanied toward the door by a very amiable foreman, who was profuse in his thanks.  Suddenly it occurred to her that she would look at the laces, and she approached Mildred, who, in a momentary respite, was leaning back against the shelves with closed eyes, weary beyond all words of description.

“Will you please wake that young woman up,” the lady remarked, a little sharply.

This the foreman did, in a way that brought what little blood the poor girl had left into her face.  The shopper sat down on the plush seat before the counter, and was soon absorbed in the enticing wares, while her husband stood beside her and stole sidelong glances at the weary but beautiful face of the saleswoman.

“Jupiter Ammon,” he soliloquized mentally, “but she is pretty!  If that flush would only last, she’d be beautiful; but she’s too pale and fagged for that—­out to a ball last night, I imagine.  She don’t even notice that a man’s admiring her—­proof, indeed, that she must have danced till near morning, if not worse.  What lives these girls lead, if half the stories are true!  I’d like to see that one rested, fresh, and becomingly dressed.  She’d make a sensation in a Fifth Avenue drawing-room if she had the sense to keep her mouth shut, and not show her ignorance and underbreeding.”

But he was growing impatient, and at last said, “Oh, come, my dear, you’ve bought enough to break me already.  We’ll be late for dinner.”

The lady rose reluctantly, and remarked, “Well, I think I’ll come and look at these another day,” and they were bowed out of the door.

“You must be more alert,” said the foreman, imperatively, to Mildred.  “These people are among the best and wealthiest in town.”

“I’ll try,” was the meek answer.

The gentleman had hardly reached the sidewalk, however, before all his chivalry and indignation were aroused.  Under the press of Christmas times a drayman had overloaded his cart, and the horse was protesting in his dumb way by refusing to budge an inch; meanwhile the owner proved himself scarcely equal to the animal he drove by furious blows and curses, which were made all the more reckless by his recent indulgence in liquor.

The poor beast soon found many champions, and foremost among them was the critic of the weary shop-girl, who had suffered more that day than the horse was capable of suffering in his lifetime.  The distinguished citizen, justly irate, I grant, sent his wife home in their carriage, and declared that he would neither eat nor sleep until he had seen the brute—­the drayman, not the horse—­arrested and looked up, and he kept his word.