i £ i — But just then Dan came—a serious y. man with a ready-made necktie, who escaped the city’s brand of frivolity—an electrican sarming $30. per week who look- ed upon Loa with the sad eys of Romeo, and thought her embroidered waist a web in which any fly should delight to be aut. “My friend, Mr. Owens—shake hands with Miss Danforth,’’ said Lon. “I'm mighty glad to kvow you, Miss Danforth, said Ts with outstretched band. ‘I've heard Lou speak of youso often.” ““Thanks,’’ said Nancy, touchivg bis fin- gers with the tips of her cold ones, ‘I've heard her mention you—a few times.”’ Bellefonte, Pa., September 7, 1906. ————————————————————— SUNSHINE BEHIND THE CLOUD. If you should see a fellow man with trouble’s flag unfurled, An’ looking like he didn’t have a friend in all the world, Go up and slap him on the back, and holler “How d' you do? “ And grasp his hand +0 warm he'll know he has a Lou giggled. friend in you. : p * him, an' laugh his ‘Did you get that handshake from Mrs. Theouz yin Whis Shanie) him, ug ’ VaunAlstyne Fisher, Nancy?’ she asked. And teil him that the darkest night is just before | ‘If I did, you can feel safe in copying oda road Kasey. uscidt at all. I¥ p , bu it right| couldn’s use it at all. It’s too Danial I itvasard Palaver bat way s vig stylish for me. It's intended to set off That God will sprinkle sunshine in the trail of | diamond rings, that high shake is. Wait every cloud. till I get a few and then I'll try it. ““‘Learn it first,” said Nancy wisely, ~ihis world at best is but a hash of pleasure and | ¢igngq you'll be more likely $S get the of pain ; rings.’ Some days are bright and sunny, and some are sloshed with rain, And that's just how it ought to be, for when the “Now, to settle this argument,’’ said Dan, with his ready, cheerful smile, ‘let me make a proposition. As I can’t take Fisher smile; “Not for mine. I saw him drive up outside. A 12 H. P. machine and an Irish cbanflenr! And yon saw what kind of handkerchiefs he bought—silk! And he's dactylis on him. Give me the real thing or nothing, if you please.” Two of the most ‘“‘refioed’’ women in the store—a forelady and a cashier—bad a few “swell gentlemen friends’” with whom now and then dined. Ounce they includ: ed Nancy in au invitation. The dinner took place in a spectacular cafe whose tables are engaged for New Year's eve a year in advance. There were two ‘‘gentlemen friends’’—oue without any hair on his head—high living ungrew it; and we can prove it—the other a young man whose worth and sophistication he impressed upon you in two convincing ways—he swore that all the wine was corked; and he wore diamond cuff bnttons. This young man perceived irresistible excellencies in Nancy. His taste ran to shop-girle; and here wae one that added the voice and manners of bis high social world to the franker charms of her own caste. So, on the following day, he appeared in the store and made her a serious proposal of mar- riage over a box of hemstitched, grass- bleached Irish linens. Nancy declined. A brown pompadour ten feet away bad been using her eyes and ears. When the re- jeoted suitor had gone she heaped carboys of upbraidings and horror upon Nancy's “What a terrible little fool you are! clouds roll by, both of you up to Tiffany's and do the We'll know just how to 'preciate the bright and right thing, what do you say toa listle smiling sky. vaudeville? I've got the tickets. How | peag So learn to take it as it comes, and don't sweat at | ahaut looking at stage diamonds since we the pores, can’t shake hands with the real spark- Because the Lord's opinion doesn't coincide | Jorg?’ with yours ; But always keep rememberin’, when cares your path enshrond, That God has lots of sunshine to spill behind the cloud. The faithfol squire took his place close to the curb; Lou next, a little peacocky in her bright and pretty clothes; Nanoy on the inside, slender, and soberly clothed as the sparrow, but with the true Van Alstyne Fisher walk—thus they set out for their evening's moderate diversion. I do not suppose that many look upon a great department store as an educational institution. But the one in which Nancy worked was something like that to ber. She was surrounded by beautiful things that breathed of taste and refinement. If you live in an atmosphere of luxury, luxury is yours whether your woney pays for it or another’s. The jeopls she served were mostly wo- men whose dress, manners, aud position io the social world were quoted as criterions. From them Naucy began to take toll—the best from each according to her view. From one she would copy and practice a gesture, from another an eloquent lifting of an eyebrow, from others, a manner of walking, or Sairying a parse, of smiling, of greeting a friend, of addressing ‘‘‘nferiors in station.” From her best beloved model, Mrs. Van Alstyne Fisher, she made re- quisition for that excellent thing, a soft, low voice as clear as silver and as perfect in articulation as the notes of a thrush. Suffused in the aura of this high social refinement and good breeding, it was im- possible for her to escape a deeper effect of it. As good habits are said to be better than good principles, so, perhaps, good manners are better than good babits. The teachings of your parents may not keep alive your New Eogland conscience: bat if you sit on a straight-back chair and repeat the words ‘‘prisms and pilgrims’ forty times the devil will flee from you. And when Naocy spoke in the Van Alstyne Fisher tones she felt the thrill of noblesse oblige to her very bones. James Whitcomb Riley. THE TRIMMED LAMP. Of coarse there are two sides to the ques- tion. Let us look at the other. We often hear Hshopgirig} spoken of. No such persons exist. There are girls who work in shops. They make their living that way. But why tarn their occuration into an ad- jective? Let us be fair. We do vot refer to the girls who live on Fifth Avenue as ‘ma rls.?? . Lon and Nancy were chums. They came to the big city to find work because there was not enough to eat at home to go around. Nancy was nineteen; Lou was twenty. Both were pretty, active, country girls who bad no ambition to go ob the stage. “he little cherub that sits up aloft guid- ed them to a cheap and respectable board- ing house. Both found positionsand be- came wage-earners. They remained chams. It is at the end of six months that I would beg you to step forward and be introduced to them. Gentle Reader: My lady friends, Mi.s Nancy and Miss Lon. While you are shaking hands please take notice—can- tiously —of their attire. Yes, cantionsly; for they are as quick to resent a stare as a lady in a box at a horse show. Lou is a piece-work ironer ina hand lanudry. She is clothed in a badly-fitting purple dress, and her bat plame is four inches too long; but her ermine muff and scarf cost $25, and its fellow beasts will be ticketed in the windows at $7.98 belere the season is over. Her cheeks are pink, and her light blue eyes bright. Content. ment radiates from her. There was another source of learning in Nancy you would call a shop-girl—be- | the great deparmental school. Whenever cause you bave the habit. There is no | you ree three or four shop-girls gather io a type; but a preverse generation is always bauch, and jiugle their wire bracelets as an seeking a type; so this 1s what the type frivolous accompaniment to appareutly should be. She bas the high ratted pom. | convention, do not think thas they are there pour, and the exaggerated straight front. | for the purpose of eriticizing the way er skirt is shoddy, hut has the correct | Ethel does her back hair. The meeting flare. No furs protect hie: agaivst the bis. | m.¥ lack the dignity of the deliberative ter spring air, hut she wears her short bodies of men; but it has all the import- NE, jacket as jauutily ax though it | ance of the occasion on which Eve and were Persian lamb! On her face and in her | ber first daughter fist put their heads to- eyes, remorseless ty pe-seeker, is the typical gether to wake Adam understand his prop- shop-girl expression. It is a look of silent | er place in the household [tis Wowan's but contemptuous revolt against cheated | Conference for Common Defense and Ex- womanhood; of sad prophecy of the ven- | change of Strategical Theories of Attack geance to come. When he Janghs ber and Repulse npon and against the World, loudest the look is still there. The same | which i« a Stage, and Mau, its Chief Usher, look cau be seen in the eyes of Russian | who Persists iv Throwing Boquets There- peasants; and those of ns left will see it | upon. Woman, the most helpless of the some day on Garbriel’s face when be comes | young of any animal-—with the fawn's to blow us up. It is a look that should | grace hut without its fleetness; with the wither and abash mau; but he has been | bird's beauty but witbout its power of known to smirk at it and offer flowers— | flight; with the honey-bee's burden of with a strivg tied to them. sweetness but withons ite—Oh, let's drop Now lift your bat aud come away. while | the similes—some of us may have been you receive Lon’s cheery ‘*See you again,’ | stung. . and the sardonic, sweet smile of Nancy | During this cooncil of war they pass that seems, somehow, to miss yon and xo | weapons one to another, and exchange fluttering like a white moth up over the | strategems thas each has devised aod for- house-tops to the stars. mulated ous of the tactics of life. The two waited on the coruer for Dan. “I says to 'im,’’ says Sadie, ‘‘ain’t you Dan was Lou's steady comyany. Faith. | the fresh thing! Who do you suppose I am, fal> Well he was on hand when Mary | to be addressing such a remark to me? would have bad to hire a dozen subpoena | And what do you think be says back to servers to find ber lamb. me?" “Ain't yon cold Nancy?’ said Loa. | The beads, brown, black, flaxen, red,and “Say, what a chump you are for working | yellow bob together, the answer is given; in that old store tor 88. a week! I made | and the parry to the thrust is decid $18.50 last week. Of course ironing ain't as swell work as selling lace behind a counter, but it pays. None of us ironers make less than $10. And I don’t know that it’s any less ul work, either.” *‘You can have it,” said Navoy, with up- lifted nose. *‘I'll take my ta week and hall bedroom. I like to be among nice things and swell people. And look what a chance I've got! Why, one of our glove girls married a Pittshurg—steel maker, or blacksmith or something—the other da; worths willion dolian, . I'll eateh a swell wyself some time. I ain’t bragging on m looks or rs gp I'll take m Hid A upon, to be used by each thereafter in passages-at-arms with the common enemy, mao. Thus Nancy learned the art of defense; avd toa woman successful defense means vietory. The curriculum of a department store is a wide one. Perbaps no other college could have fitted her as well for ber life's am- bition—the drawing of a matrimonial prize. Her station in the store was a favored one. The music room was near enough for her to hear and become familiar with the words of the best composers—at least to acquire the familiarity that passed for Sppesision ju i% the J world in which was v y try and aspiring foot. She absorbed the edu- cating influence of art wares, of costly and and dainty fabrics, of adornments that are almost culture to women. The other girls soon became aware of 's ambition. “Here comes your mil- , Nance,”’ they would call to her when-ever any man who looked the role ed her counter. It got to bea babit of men, who were hanging about while their women folk were shopping, to stroll over to the handkerchief counter and dawdle over the cambric equares. Nancy's imitation, high-bred air and genuine dainty beauty was what attracted. Many men thus came to display their graces before her. Some of them may have been mil- lionaires; others were certainly no more than their sedulous apes. Naocy learned to discriminate. There was a window at the end of the handkerchie! counter; and she could see the rows of vehicles waiting for the shoppers in the street be- low. She looked, and ved that an- tomobiles differ as well as do their own- ers. where there's prizes offered. What show would a girl have in a laandry?”’ ‘Why, that’s where I met Dan,” said Lou, trinm tly. ‘‘He came in for his Sunday shirt and collars and saw me at the first board, ironing. We all try to get to work at the first board. Ella Magionis wae sick that day, and I bad her place. He said he noticed my arms first, how | Ni round and white they was. I bad my | Ii sleeves rolled np. Some nice fellows come nto laundries. You can tell ’em by their bringiog their clothes in suit cases, and turning in the door sharp and sudden.” ‘‘How can you wear a waist like that, Lou?" said Nancy gazing down at the of- fending article with sweet scorn in her heavy-lidded eyes. ‘‘It shows fierce taste.’ *“This waist?’’ oried Lou, with wide-eyed indignation. ‘Why, I paid $16. lor this waist. It's worth twenty-five. A woman left it to be laundered, and vever called for it. The boss sold it to me. It’s got yards of hand embroidery on it. Better talk about that ogly, plain thing you've got on ” ‘“This ugly, plain thing,’ said Naocy calmly, ‘was copied from one thas Mrs. Van Alstyne Fisher was wearing. The girls say ber bill in the store last year was 12,000. I made mine, myself. It cost me $1.50. Ten feet away you couldn't tell it from here.” “Ob, well,” said Lon, ‘“if you want to starve t on aire, go abead. 2 IN Hie _ 3 after hours give me i as ay and attractive to wear pr able to buy.” Once a fasciuat tleman bought out desen bandk is uth ber across the counter with a Cophetua a When he had gone one of the girls “What's w warm up to that fellow? He looks the swell article, all right, to me.”’ -pataredly, sweetest, most impersonal, Van Alstyne to set a tentative | mon “Him? said Nancy, with ber coolest, | on That fellow’s a millionaire—he’s a nephew of old Van Skittles himself. And he was talking on the level, too. Have you gone crazy, Nauce?'’ “Have 1?" said Nancy. “‘I dido’t take him, did 1? He isn’s a milliooaire #o bard that you could notice it, anyhow. His family only allows him $20,000 a year to spend. The bald-beaded fellow was guy- ing him about it the other night at sup- per.” The brown pompadoar came nearer and narrowed her eyes. ‘Say, what you want?’ she inquired, in a voice hoarse for lack of chewing-gum. **Ain’t that enongh for you? Do you waut to be a Mormon, and marry Rockefeller and Gladstone Dowie and the Kivg of Spain and the whole bunch? Ain't $20,- 000 a year good enough for yon?" Nancy flushed a little under the level gaze of the black, shallow eyes. “It wasn't altogether the money, Car- rie,” she explained. “His friend caught him in a rank lie the other night at din- ner. It was about some girl he said he hadn’s been to the theater with. Well, I can’t stand a liar. Put everything together —1 don’t like him; and that settles it. When I sell out it’s not going to be on any bargain day. I’ve got to bave some- thing that sits up in a chair like a man, anybow. Yes, I'm looking out for a catch; but it’s got to be able toldo something more than make a voise like a toy bank.” ‘“The physiopathic ward for yours!” said the brown pompadoar, walkiog away. These high ideas, if not ideals—Nancy continued to cultivate on $8. per week. She bivouacked on the trail of the great unknown ‘‘catch,’’ eating her dry bread and tightening her belt day by day. On her face was the faint, soldierly, sweet, | grim smile of the preordaived man-hanter. | The store was her forest; and many times she raised ber rifle at game that seemed hroad-antlered and big; but always some deep unerrivg instinot—perbaps of the hantress, perhaps of the women—made her tiold her fire and take up the trail again. Lou flourished in the laundry. Out of ber $18.50 per week she paid $6. for her room and beard. The rest went mainly for clothes. Her opportunities for better- ing her taste and manners were few com- pared with Nancy's. In the steaming laundry there was nothing but work, work and her thoughts of the evening pleasures to come. Many costly and showy fabrics passed under her iron; and it may be that her growing fondness for dress was thus transmitted to ber through the conducting meial. When the day's work was over Dan awaited ber outside, her faithful shadow in whatever light she stood. Sometimes he cast an honest and troubled glance at Lou's clothes, that increased in Meonspicuity rather than in style; but this was no disloyalty; hedeprecated the atten- tion they called 10 her in the streets. And Lou was no less faithfa! to her cham. There was a law that Nancy should go with them on whatsoever outings they might take. Dan bore the extra burden heartily and in good cheer. It mighs be said that Lou farpished the color, Nancy the tone, and Dan the weight of the dis- traction seeking trio. The escort, in his neat but obviously ready-made suit, his ready-made tie and unfailing, genial, ready- made wit never startled or clashed. He was of that kind that you are likely to forget while they are present, but re- member distinotly they are gone. To Nancy's superior taste the flavor of these ready-made pleasures was sometimes a little bitter; but she was young; and youth is a gourmand, when it cannot bea rmet. “Dan is always wanting me to marry him right away,” Lou told ber once. ‘‘But why should I? I'm independent. I can do as I please with the money I earn; and he never would agree for me to keep on workiog afterward. And say, Nance, what do you want to stick to that old store for, and ball starve and half dress yourself ? I could get yon a place in the laundry t now if you'd come. It seems to me you could afford to be a little less stuck- up it you could make a good deal more ey. “I don’t think I'm stuck-up, Lou,’ said Nancy, *‘but I'd rather live on balf rations and stay where I am. I so I've the habit. It’s the chance that I want. I don’t expect to be always behind a coun- ter. I'm learning something new every day. I'm right up against refined and rich people all the time—even if I do only wait on them; and I'm pot missing any pointers that I see passing around.” “Caoght your millionaire yet?" asked Lou with her teasing laugh. “‘I baven's selected one yet,”’ answered Nancy. ‘I've been looking them over.” “Goodness ! the idea of picking over ‘em ! Don’t you ever let one get hy you Nance—even if he's a few dollars shy. But of course you're joking—millionaires don’s think abouts working girls like us.” *‘It might be better for them if they did,*’ said Nancy, with cool wisdom. “Some of us could teach them how to take care of hel 1 money." ol od one was to s| to me, * ed Lou, *‘I know I'd have a duok-fit.”” ““That’s because you don’t know any. The only difference between swells and other people is you have to watch ‘em closer. Don’t you think that red silk lin- ing is just a little bit too bright for that coat, Lou?" Lou looked at the plain, dull olive plat jacket rong, Nance, that you didn’t | of her “Well, no I don’t—but it may seem £0 beside that faded-looking thing you've got “This jacket,”’ said Nancy, complacent- ly, **has exactly the cut and fir - { one that ! Mis. Van Alstyne Fisher was weaning the | other day. Tue material costme $398 1 suppose hers cost about $100 more.” i “Ob, well,” said Lou lightly, ‘it don't | strike me as millionaire bait. Shonlin’s wonder if I cateh one before you do, any- way ruly is would bave taken a philosopher to decide upon t e valuesof the theories beld by the two friends. Lon, lacking that certain pride and fastidiousness that keeps stores and desks filled with girls working for the bares living, thumped away gaily with her iron in the noisy and stifling laondry. Her wagessupported her beyond the point of comfort; so that her dress profi until sometimes she cast a sidelong glance of impatience at the neat bat inelegant apparel of Dan—Dan the con- stant, the immutable, the nodeviating. As for Naocy, her case was one of tens of thousands. Silk and jewels and laces and ornaments and the perfume and music of the fine world of good-breeding and taste— these were made for womau ; they are her equitable portion. Let her keep near them if they are a part of life to her, and if she will. She is no traitor to bersell, as E