“That’s just it. If I could only meet them!” Lena got up and walked restlessly about the room. Her eyes fell on the last night’s copy of the Star, opened to that chatty column headed “Woman’s Fancies”. She had read it with absorbed interest. Her body halted now, for the muscles often stop work when the mind becomes possessed of a great idea. She stood for a long time and looked from the unwashed window-pane while a new resolve slowly hardened itself within.
“I’ll try, I’ll try, I’ll try,” she said to herself, and her heart thumped uncomfortably. “And if I take it to the office myself, when they see me perhaps they—”
Aloud she said nothing, for she had early learned the great lesson that the best way of getting her own will with her mother was to do what she wished first and argue about it afterward.
“What have we got for supper, mother?” she asked.
“Nothing,” said Mrs. Quincy sharply.
“Nothing? Well, give me some money and let me go and get something.”
Mrs. Quincy reluctantly lifted her skirt and began to explore her petticoat below. She shook open the mouth of a pocket into which she dived to return with a knotted handkerchief. Lena looked on impatiently as the knot was slowly untied and a small hoard of silver disclosed.
“There,” said Mrs. Quincy. “You can take this quarter, Lena, and do get something nourishing. Don’t buy cream-cakes. I feel the need of what will stay my stomach.”
“I’ll get baked-beans,” answered the girl with a short laugh.
“Yes, do. I shan’t have another cent till next pay-day comes. We’ve got to make this last. Get some tea, Lena—green, remember. The beans won’t cost more than twelve cents. I don’t see how you can have a new hat.”