Tears rushed to the girl’s eyes. She began fastening on her hat to conceal her emotion.
“I’m going to Chicago,” she muttered, “just as soon as I am able. Nothing there can be much worse than being compelled to work in Millville under you. Good gracious,” she added maliciously, after giving him a thorough inspection, “it’s no use to stand here arguing with you.”
With this taunt Miss Elsie gave her hat a final adjustment, then, leaving Mr. Hiram Kemble speechless with rage and injured dignity, she walked out of the factory door.
CHAPTER II
SEEING MILLVILLE
The distance from the Millville button factory to the corner of Main and Pine streets in Millville itself is, if you take the short cut through Nutting’s Grove, as all sensible Millvillians do, a five minutes’ walk. If the reader, touring Millville in search of the beginnings of this story, will make that journey in his imagination he will find himself standing on the rough board walk in front of John Price’s general store.
From her eminence on the top of one of Mr. John Price’s high stools Patience Welcome glanced up from the ledger over which she was toiling, put the blunt end of her pen into her mouth and looked out into the street drenched in sunshine. A half dozen farmers’ horses, moored to the hitching rack in front of the store, threshed restlessly with their tails at enthusiastic banqueting flies, newborn into a world that seemed to be filled with juicy horses.
The scene did not interest Patience. Her glance went on across the street where an overdressed young man, just alighted from an automobile, stood surveying his surroundings. His eyes met hers. He removed his hat with an elaborate bow. The girl, a little piqued and a little amused, reached over very quietly and drew down the window curtain. Then she resumed operations on the ledger with the sharp end of the pen.