She took up her embroidery and fell to work. Since filling Mrs. Summerfield Ely's first order Elaine had received several others from that lady and her friends. She had outgrown her early foolish humiliation over the idea of doing such work for pay. Mrs. Ely treated her with as scrupulous a courtesy as she would have showed any other girl, and gave her work the praise which to the conscientious is always the best of the rewards of toil. At the same time, Elaine's judgment, sharpened by necessity, was grasping the fact that this dainty work, well enough to fill in the leisure minutes, was a very poor dependence when the bread and butter problem was under consideration.
Peggy came in upon her one afternoon, when the dreariness of the grey winter sky seemed to Elaine an inadequate symbol of her own sombre mood. Peggy's arrival was like a rift in the clouds, letting the blue shine through, a real sunbeam visitation. Smiles were not easy for Elaine these days, but her face did brighten noticeably at the sight of Peggy.
"You don't mind if I keep on, I know," she said as Peggy took the nearest chair. "Mrs. Laughlin is in a hurry for this."
"I don't mind your keeping on as far as I'm concerned," Peggy replied, viewing her narrowly. "But I do mind the way you're squinting over that embroidery. What's the matter? Are your eyes hurting you?"
Elaine let the embroidery fall, closing her eyes, and further protecting them by a sheltering hand. "Hurt?" she repeated. "I should think so."
"What's the matter?"
"Too much close work, I suppose. I've kept at it till late two or three nights this week."
"It isn't going to pay you," warned Peggy, "to ruin your eyes for what you can make out of embroidery."
"It doesn't pay anyway," sighed Elaine. "You wouldn't believe how many hours it takes me to earn ten dollars." She had given herself as long a recess as she dared, and she fell to work again, her eyes blinking and suffused with moisture as if reluctant to reassume their duties.
Peggy's silence was unusually prolonged. "I had a new experience this week," she remarked casually at last. "I had a job offered me and refused it."